AeRoSteele,
I have read that there are only about a dozen cheese producers in the U.S. who use raw milk in making cheeses, and they are essentially artisan producers in family-owned operations. I have read of several types of cheeses (far more than just cheddar) produced from raw milk but no mozzarella cheese. U.S. cheese importers have been lobbying for years to import raw-milk, unpasteurized cheeses from countries that produce such cheeses but, to the best of my knowledge, they have not been successful to date, or at least not in a material way. David Rosengarten recently wrote on this subject in a report on cheese, from which the following was excerpted:
...we must consider the vexed subject of pasteurization, and U.S. pasteurization laws. As you know, these kinds of cheeses in France are made from raw milk--milk that hasn't been heated, or "pasteurized," in an industrial-scientific-fascistic attempt to kill off bacteria in the milk. Any turophile will tell you that only marginally insane people obsess about pasteurization--and that pasteurized cheese never has the potential for developing complex flavors in the same way as unpasteurized cheese does. But our government is convinced that an unpasteurized cheese, eaten before it reaches 60 days old, is seething with potential disease. Millions of people eat cheese like this every day in France, but you cannot find it here.
Peter
