While we were visiting Ireland, we had to explain to Irish friends why Americans wanted to buy cheese so badly — and why they’d have to sneak it home. From Hey, Wanna Score Some Cheese?:
Even as America guards its borders against threats from abroad ranging from terrorism to mad cow disease, one intruder is proving particularly difficult to keep out: illegal cheese. The stinky French kind.Cheese lovers — a fast-growing constituency in the U.S. — covet the stuff because it is made from raw, unpasteurized milk. That is the ingredient that gives many French and other handmade cheeses their distinctive, complex flavors. But the Food and Drug Administration bans the sale of all cheeses made with raw milk that haven’t been aged for at least 60 days. It says they are unsafe because raw-milk products can carry pathogens including E. coli and listeria.
The rule is even more restrictive for cheeses made in that hotbed of forbidden fromage, France. Thanks to a listeria outbreak in the mid-1980s, the U.S. bans any soft raw-milk cheese that is produced there, regardless of how long it is aged. These rules prohibit even basic cheeses like genuine Brie and Camembert. (Sorry, but the Brie that supermarkets stock here has been pasteurized, making it more bland and rubbery than the real thing.)