Sean DaviesSeriously, someone let that li’l buddy outta jail.
If mold is an essential component of some cheeses, how do you know when cheese goes bad? It’s a blurry line straddled by anyone who’s scraped fuzzy green gunge off a wedge of asiago and eaten it anyway, Bridget Jones-style. But the FDA has decided the French have gone too far:
Indignation is growing among cheese-lovers in France and the U.S. after Washington branded a type of French cheese as unfit for human consumption.
The US government slapped an import ban on mimolette cheese at the end of May, leaving 1.5 tonnes of the item impounded at a warehouse.
American food inspectors object to the use of mites to refine its flavour …
According to the U.S. food and drug administration, the cheese “appears to consist in whole or in part of a filthy, putrid or decomposed substance or be otherwise unfit for food.”
People are NOT happy about being denied their right to eat gross stuff, according to the BBC. The “Save the Mimolette” Facebook page has nearly 4,400 likes, with “Let us eat stinky cheese!” as its rallying cry. For its Independence Day update, the page’s organizers wrote, “Wish the cheese could be free too!” Way to tug at our heartstrings, cheese people. As fan Morgane Tassez wrote on the page in French, “Noooooo, I live abroad, I will die if I cannot bring Mimolette! I WANT MY MIMOLETTE!” Calm down, random French person; it’s not MTV.
But the Mimolette-crazed make a good point: Why is gross, fake-orange Kraft cheese legal when legitimately orange, quality French stuff isn’t? It IS kind of a double standard. The Washington Times points out further hypocrisy:
Mimolette is actually not the only cheese entertaining little bugs. Dozens of other varieties, including several produced in the United States, rely on cheese mites in the manufacturing process. Even some cheddars have mites.
As suggested by one commenter, maybe Mimolette is actually TOO good for Americans. We eat some gross shit, after all.
