New Zealand's Food Safety Authority is looking at relaxing its stance on longstanding prohibitions designed to protect the public from illness caused by raw milk.
Dozens of infectious diseases from bacteria such as salmonella, campylobacter, listeria, e.coli and Tb have been linked to the consumption of untreated milk.
The agency is proposing a framework allowing a wider variety of raw milk cheeses and other products to be produced and sold in New Zealand and there is a similar push in Australia.
The managing-director of Whitestone Cheese in Oamaru, Bob Berry, said he would be watching possible changes to the regulations with interest. He believes there will be demand for cheese made with raw milk, but it will be limited.
He expects standards to be extremely stringent, particularly for soft cheeses.
His factory would be interested in making specialty cheeses from raw milk, but he would be waiting to see the restrictions.
Evansdale Cheese owner Colin Dennison said his factory near Waikouaiti was designed to use pasteurised milk, which he considered produced a much more consistent product.
Cheeses made from non-pasteurised milk could be "lovely", but they could also be "bloody awful stuff", he said.
Mr Dennison said his factory did not make the types of hard cheeses most suited to the use of raw milk and he would not like to see the use of raw milk extended to soft cheeses.
It would be interesting to see what the demand would be for cheeses made with raw milk. New Zealand had a tradition of using pasteurised milk and there was an acceptance of the need for that.
He would be concerned if "some guy with two cows down the road" could produce cheese using raw milk without having to invest in food safety measures as he had done.
Like Mr Berry, he expected controls on the use of raw milk to be stringent.
There is no plan to allow New Zealanders access to any more liquid raw milk than they are presently allowed - five litres sold at the farm gate for personal consumption.
Under the proposed framework some products such as extra-hard Parmesan-style raw milk cheeses would be rated as posing no greater food safety concerns than pasteurised cheeses.
Roquefort would be classed as a low risk for the general population but potentially posing higher risk for vulnerable consumers, such as pregnant women, babies and toddlers, the frail elderly and patients with compromised immune systems.
A third category would be raw milk products that cannot at present be produced to an acceptable level of safety.
Submissions on the proposal close on September 30.
Raw milk has become trendy in the United States despite its sale being illegal in 22 states. The country's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has said raw milk or raw milk products were implicated over 1000 cases of illness from 1998 to May 2005. - Kent Atkinson of NZPA
