Cowgirl Creamery Cheese Shop, Washington D.C.
Jack Everitt of Fork & Bottle told me that Cowgirl Creamery will be opening a store in Washington, D.C. at 919 F St. NW. They expect to open on April 6. Expect to find their award-winning cheeses as well as others from small producers.
Why Washington, D.C.? It may be nothing more than the fact that both Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, the cheese company’s founders, are from the area. But I for one hope they use their proximity to lawmakers to effect changes to the raw-milk laws in this country, which currently don’t allow cheese to be made from raw milk unless it’s been aged for sixty days. Pasteurized cheeses are mere shadows of the raw-milk incarnations, but ungrounded fears of listeria prevent the USDA from approving the more flavorful versions.
Good luck on that raw milk legislation. When the reason that the law was passed in the first place had to do with the spread of tuberculosis though milk, you know, the lawmakers are not likely to go against history and change the law.
As much as I think that it is kind of dumb, and that if a product is labelled as “raw” and “possibly hazardous” or whatever they want, then someone should be able to buy it, I don’t think it will happen.
I’d like to see it happen so that we could get a couple of small dairies started locally around here–we have plenty of farmers running milk goats and cows, but they are not selling their products–they milk for themselves. Ohio’s dairy laws are quite draconian, you see.