OP is usually a troll but on this topic there's some truth.
The Estrella Family Creamery in Washington state was one of the most respected artisan cheesemakers in the state. They were fully licensed and very professional about their health standards. This included doing their own testing for contamination.
One day they found listeria contamination in their Cave 3. They followed procedure right down to the letter, reporting the FDA, stopping sales of all cheese that had been through Cave 3 and issuing a recall (voluntary on their part) of all cheese that had been through Cave 3. As it happens, it was all soft cheese.
They closed the cave, brought in the FDA for recommendations and made every change the FDA requested of them, mortgaging their farm to do so. They returned to making cheese aged in that cave but did not sell any of it pending the FDA's ok.
Upon retesting, the FDA found listeria still in that cave unfortunately, and they also found it in the drain in the make room and in the wheel track of the little on premise retail shop. This is where things started to go bad.
The FDA asked the Estrellas to do a recall of ALL their cheeses. The only thing out in the market were their hard aged cheeses. Now, there has never been a case of hard cheese listeriosis in the history of the US and in general cheeses aged more than 18 months are considered not a risk for listeriosis. This was entirely at the discretion of the FDA, there was no listeria bacteria found anywhere in the hard cheese aging caves, and they had no good reason to do a recall.
Faced with the prospect of losing $600,000 worth of product on top of their expensive changes and remortgaged farm, in the face of an overwhelming lack of evidence, the Estrellas refused the recall. Here is where things go from bad to worse.
Context: the Estrellas have adopted several children from Africa. Their oldest is 22, their youngest is 12. Three girls, two boys. These are unbelieveably good kids, amazingly happy and well adjusted considering the trauma they've gone through in their lives. Some of them saw their parents killed in front of them when they were young. The FDA inspectors know this; they are well acquainted with the businesses and people they inspect.
The FDA rounded up the Federal Marshals and one day, with no notice, they showed up on the Estrellas doorstep, FULLY ARMED, to shut down the facility and seize the product. The kids were home alone. They asked the marshals to wait, that their parents were 15 minutes away and on their way home, but the marshals refused.
They broke sanitary protocol all over the creamery, walking in to the make room with mud-caked boots, no hairnets, etc, causing contamination as they shut down the facility. They put a seizure notice on the doors. The FDA then made up a list of complaints (spiderwebs, rust, cheesemaker eating out of the middle of the cheese wheel and putting it back, etc.) and it was formally posted. Trust me, I've been out there, I've seen Kelly Estrella as she makes cheese, and none of those complaints are accurate.
Now, the Estrellas can go to court to combat this but cheese has a limited shelf life. They cannot afford to fight this, and even if they could the product that is locked up would be worthless by the time the court battle even rolled started.
They have shut down their entire business and are trying desperately to stay afloat while they transition their business to an organic CSA. Honestly, they have a very slim chance of making it, considering that they have no income and have to ramp up both a market and product within a year.
The FDA in Washington is absolutely in bed with the dairy industry, and the dairy industry is a pretty powerful lobby. They love to help the local news out with scare tactic stories about raw milk and, given the overblown all natural movement in the Seattle area, the newspaper finds it a properly controversial topic to cover.
My husband has dairy goats and we do not sell or share milk. We could be arrested for pouring you a glass if you came over to our house, even if you signed a waver. It is harder to get a license to sell raw milk or cheese than pretty much anything else you can imagine, even if you plaster the thing with warning labels. There are plenty of people out there who know everything you could know about the risks and still really want to buy it, but that apparently doesn't matter jack shit.
People all over Europe and actually every else in the world drink raw milk and eat raw milk cheese, but the US regulates the stuff like it is arsenic. You can produce and sell it but the regulations are ridiculous, the setup is prohibitively expensive, and as you can see with the Estrellas, the government can shut you down anytime they want without any practical recourse on your part.
[edit] By contrast, I just got back from Italy where we visited a parmigiano maker, large scale. The doors didn't shut during working hours, there were flies, plenty of rust, all raw milk, no hairnets, no washing off shoes, but this is a maker who is selling tons of of the Parmesan cheese you buy at the grocery store. When you salt the shit out of your cheese and age it, IT ISN'T DANGEROUS. They allow that stuff to be imported without even half the regulations we face in the US, but they shut down a domestic operation for a single swab of listeria in the drain.
Oh, and not all listeria is dangerous, and the FDA declined to ever test what they got from the Estrellas to find out if it was a dangerous strain.
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