Letter: Misinformed show need for culture shift

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this letter misspelled Vimala Rajendran's name. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.

TO THE EDITOR:

I would like to publicly appreciate the student who wrote a letter to The Daily Tar Heel for raising her concern about raw milk cheeses on a buffet we served at the Gillings School of Public Health. To maintain the public health, we need such vigilance.

However, in this case, the student’s concern was unfounded: The cheeses served were perfectly safe and completely in compliance with all Department of Agriculture regulations. Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe was the caterer for the event, the fourth annual celebration of local foods of its kind. The table was covered with plenty of potentially unfamiliar foods, all locally sourced: pawpaws; muscadines; various pears; ugly apples; savory cakes called handvo; nut and seed crackers handmade from local whole wheat flour; and yes, aged artisan raw milk cheeses. Thanks so much also to The Daily Tar Heel for leading the way for this much needed conversation about the importance of eating healthily through local foods.

We believe that sustainable, wholesome, and delicious food is an important part of preventative health care. We appreciate what the Gillings School of Global Health stands for and we’re proud to be partners in promoting health in our community. The questions raised in the student’s letter inspire us to educate ourselves further about the complex, intrinsic goodness of the food we eat and serve, without preservatives, pesticides, growth hormones, and genetically modified varieties. As a restaurant we get so busy we don’t always make the time to spread the news about the health value of our ingredients and the amount of goodness that comes from eating locally sourced food, including deliberately unpasteurized foods like cheeses.

The student wrote in her letter, “The spread included raw milk cheese — cheese that is made from unpasteurized milk. The irony of serving raw milk cheese in a school of public health is hard to miss. Pasteurization, which kills harmful bacteria, is one of public health’s finest achievements in disease prevention.”

It is understandable, in the quest to stop pathogenic dangers, that there are misunderstandings and disagreements about raw milk. That’s why, when we serve our raw cheeses we also offer the name of the source and their contact information, so people who have concerns about production practices or ingredients are welcome to read the label or follow up with our restaurant or the producer. If there were ever a concern about something we served, or if new data emerged, we would be prepared to participate fully in source traceback.

Complete and accurate information is essential to health management. The students at the school of public health will learn as they go on in their education that there is a huge psychological component to public health. Disseminating misinformation about health issues in the media can lead to panic. It is therefore of utmost importance for anyone making a public statement to thoroughly research the matter before it is released.

When I reached out to Chapel Hill Creamery farmer Portia McKnight she said, “Raw milk cheeses are perfectly legal if they are aged for at least 60 days. If the student is referring to our cheese, we are inspected and approved by the NC Department of Agriculture; they are aware of all of our cheeses, both raw and pasteurized. It is not required that the cheeses even be labeled “raw milk” — we do that so that the customers will have full disclosure — some do not want raw milk; others want only raw milk.”

Chapel Hill Creamery is only one of many artisan farmers and producers who are resurrecting traditional food production methods coupled with modern sanitation standards to bring flavor complexity, depth, and a healthy microecosystem back into every bite.

Like many passionate chefs in our town, our restaurant purposefully serves cultured foods, — cheeses, yogurt, pickles, chutneys, kimchee, dosa batter, carefully made to the standards set by the Orange County Health Department.

Traditional cultivation and culturing practices introduce a flavor spectrum impossible to replicate with mega agribusiness ingredients and sterilized, pasteurized products poured from plastic jars and tetrapaks. We start with fresh components and we invite the bacteria in, like long-welcome guests, as our ancestors have done for centuries. It may seem counterintuitive to those who come from a different discipline. When we serve raw cheeses from local dairy farmers we trust, we know we can count on them to do so in an equally responsible fashion. We visit farms and we meet livestock as they roam freely in pastures, rather than being kept confined in tight, dirty enclosures. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and local health departments work together to help producers and restaurants like ours maintain impeccably clean production spaces.

At the end of the day, we really just dream of equitable access to healthy, delicious, safe, culturally relevant food for all, and we might define that differently. I look forward to keeping the conversation flowing about how we get there.

Vimala Rajendran

Chef-owner of Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe