This is a story that hits close to home. I was privileged to work, for many years, in the gourmet food department of an upscale wine retailer. The store had a humidor so fragrant you would catch a buzz just standing in it. We had a wine cellar stocked with bottles worth thousands of dollars apiece. The liqueur aisles showcased the finest spirits from around the world. The entire back wall displayed imported beers and ales from a hundred different countries.
It was a blast to work there. My co-workers and I were a wide-awake team, each of us experts on the products we offered. I was the resident wise guy and cheesemonger.
The Gourmet Grocery featured a fifteen-foot-long, floor-to-ceiling, open-air cheesecase. Picture three shelves full of sharp, aged, English and artisinal domestic cheddar; half rounds of golden, nutty, Swiss Emmentaler; luscious, decadent, triple-cream Bries from France; pungent, cave-ripened blues; smooth, tangy goat's milk cheeses; and eighty pound wheels of lemony, toothsome, Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Imagine then my reaction when I read a story about cheesemakers in a Russian dairy, bathing in the vats of warm, fermenting milk.
“What happened in this dairy plant is, of course, a case of sheer idiocy, but nowadays there is nothing to prevent such idiots from indulging in similar outrages," said Dmitry Yanin, the board chairman of the Russian Confederation of Consumer Societies.
Photographs and a video posted by an employee, who participated in the New Year's Eve festivities, surfaced on a Russian social network, and prompted regional authorities to close the facility for a thorough inspection.
Artyom Romanov, who shot the footage of himself and his naked co-workers relaxing in the tub, said, “In reality our work is very boring."
Trade House Cheeses, a dairy producer in Omsk, Siberia, about 1,600 miles east of Moscow, was ordered closed for 90 days.
The deputy chief of the Omsk region's sanitary inspection agency stated in a report, “The production and service facilities are in an unsatisfactory sanitary condition. Conditions for personal hygiene are lacking.”
Ya think...?
Consumer reaction was swift. After the video appeared on Russian television network, NTV (not to be confused with MTV, where such actions would be acceptable), many residents of Omsk refused to buy products made at the plant.
Dmitry Yanin explained, "Russia has been practically exercising no control over consumer production after a law was introduced limiting inspections of such facilities to only once every three years. This has led to dire consequences, especially in food production and catering services, resulting in thousands of health-related cases every year.
“But for the video appearing on a social net, we would have never known about the risks of using this facility's products. The entire sphere of food production is now completely out of the state's control, which means that none of us are safe when we buy food in Russia these days.”
While researching this story, several titles and taglines came to mind, such as -
Say Cheese!
These workers put the butt in butter
The cream rises to the top
Is this where head cheese comes from?
Rub-a-dub-dub, five men in a stainless steel tub
Inspectors Are Lactose Intolerant
and the ever popular, 'Don't Pee in the Brie'
You can watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S82oEZ0URIg#t=37
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