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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

Disclaimer: I do not present this as an encouragement for law- 
breaking. All who know me here know that I always toe the legal line  
and have not an anarchist bone in my body. This is presented merely  
as interesting anecdotal information on what others are doing to  
offer food that they and their customers deem superior to what  
government regulators allow. Proceed at your own comfort level.

Excerpted from Travel + Leisure magazine, January 2007, page 62. The  
article title is Flirting With The Forbidden and is authored by Peter  
Jon Lindberg.

"It was through [Steven] Jenkins ['one of America's leading cheese  
experts'] that I learned of a dairy farmer who's cleverly showing up  
the Law: Mary Falk, owner of Love Tree Farm in Grantsburg, Wisconsin.  
Falk is crafting a soft, chalky specimen from the raw milk of a  
Jersey cow and aging it for just six weeks, 18 days fewer than the  
legal requirement. Ergo, this cheese--about which Jenkins raves,  
"I've never tasted anything so good in my whole life"--is illegal to  
sell for human consumption. Which is why Falk sells it under the  
label Fishbait.

"As long as customers are warned that this beautiful wheel of creamy  
goodness is for catching trout, not eating (nudge-nudge, wink-wink),  
Fishbait is legal. But is it safe? Consider that the FDA allows store- 
bought milk to have a maximum bacteria 'plate count' of 20,000. Love  
Tree Farm's milk averages fewer than 5,000--and it retains all its  
natural vitamin content. Yet raw milk is illegal in almost half of  
the country.

"As always, loopholes exist. There's now a growing trend toward 'cow- 
share' collectives, set up by dairy farms, that, in exchange for a  
modest buy-in, provide members with raw milk and yogurt. Like  
Fishbait cheese, this is quasi-legal: most state laws prohibit only  
the sale of unpasteurized milk. But the cow's owners--in this case,  
all 417 of them--are perfectly entitled to consume it."