Draft standard could harm cheese quality

Processed cheesemakers could be troubled by a draft standard that some believe will discourage innovation by focusing on the quantity of cheese solids in products at the expense of quality.

The draft standard has been issued by international food standards body Codex Alimentarius. The Provision Trade Federation (PTF), representing companies supplying meat, canned food and dairy products, said quality, blend and ‘know how’ were equally as important as quantity in making processed cheese.

It would be difficult to enforce minimum cheese content because of the absence of a reliable method of analysing the content of processed cheese and cheese spreads, said the PTF.

The standard will be reviewed at a Codex committee next February. The working group producing the draft comprises 40 members, including two from processed cheese maker Kraft Foods US and others from French cheesemaker Bel Group, maker of Mini Babybel.

“The working group proposed five sub-categories of processed cheese, with corresponding cheese content,” said PTF director general Clare Cheney. “It’s incredibly complicated.”

Cheney went on to say the standard was “not a good way of gauging the quality” of the processed cheese. She also questioned whether it was practicable to operate the standard on an international basis. “It would be more appropriate to have an industry standard put together by members from companies.”

Kraft believes that all three of the Codex processed cheese standards should be updated. In a statement it said: “We don’t think that all existing products can be adequately regulated by a single standard for processed cheese. We will continue to work with the International Dairy Federation to provide comments in its forums about this topic. We also make our views known to Codex through our work with government regulatory agencies.”