Anchorage Daily News

WASILLA -- Some 30,000 pounds of cheddar cheese made from raw milk is sitting in coolers, aging and taking up space at Matanuska Creamery, the dairy industry savior trying to fill the void left by the death of Matanuska Maid.

The cheddar is a 30,000-pound experiment in making unpasteurized cheese. The goal was to save local farmers from having to dump huge amounts of milk the creamery couldn't otherwise use because its pasteurizing equipment wasn't yet up and running.

So far, the motto of the story seems to be, no good deed goes unpunished.

With dairies literally dumping milk in their fields, Karen Olson dreamed up something called "cheese futures." The creamery bought milk from dairies, then sold about $115,000 in "shares" of cheese yet to be made to about 350 people.

The buyers understood that cheese made from unpasteurized, or raw, milk has to be refrigerated for a long time to remove any dangerous bacteria. Refrigerating it for 60 days is supposed to eliminate such bacteria, said Kristin Ryan, environmental health director for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Half the cheese belongs to the farmers, who haven't yet been paid for the milk. The other half of the future cheese was sold to, among others, three gold mining companies that paid $75,000 for cheese to be donated to food banks, said Olson, who is spearheading the project as treasurer to Alaska Farmers and Stockgrowers, Inc.

The bad news is, refrigerating the cheese for 60 days didn't work. Tests at the state's Anchorage lab in early June found a nasty bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes, according to Ryan.

The bacteria can cause listeriosis, a potentially fatal disease for the elderly, infants or those with weakened immune systems.

So they chilled the cheese for 30 more days, which still did not eliminate the bacteria, Ryan said.

Olson disagrees. Samples of the cheese shipped to a Washington state lab showed no bacteria, she said. However, the lab wasn't certified by the Food and Drug Administration, so the state can't recognize the results, Ryan said.

The cheese posed no risk to the public Ryan said.

It never left the cooler, where it still sits, aging some more, taking up space that could be used for milk, which represents the creamery's main source of income, Olson said.

She's confident the aging will work -- and make for some tasty sharp cheddar. For now however, the creamery will distribute only cheese made from pasteurized milk to futures buyers, she said.

Distribution starts this weekend at the creamery and the Anchorage Farmer's Market.

"The creamery has done a stellar job," Ryan said. "They tried to do something. It just didn't work."

She recommended that anyone choosing to eat raw milk products make sure they pass state-certified tests. But Olson said she's eaten raw milk cheese, and so have some plant workers. "We're all alive and kicking," she said.

Matanuska Creamery was started by former dairy farmer Kyle Beus to buy and sell local milk after the state-owned Mat Maid dairy closed in December, leaving four Mat-Su farmers with no place to sell.

ADVERTISEMENT