ABSTRACT
Concerning human-microbe relations in food production, European Union legislation predominately places its focus on keeping those microbes that are harmful to human health under control. As such, this legislation takes a Pasteurian approach whereby human-microbe partnerships such as the ones Paxson has described in her writing about post-Pasteurian cheese makers. Based on fieldwork on human-microbe relations in dairy production in Croatia, this chapter describes how this approach taken in European Union legislation serves to homogenise human-microbe relations: to work legally, farmers must follow these regulations and employ the food hygiene technologies they proscribe. One effect of this is that it has the potential to contribute to the homogenisation of the local microbiome, since cheeses that are made using “traditional” techniques are no longer legal. But I suggest that these small-scale cheese-making techniques should not be so readily dismissed, since they offer a possible avenue to think about novel forms of environmentally sustainable food production. In response to this, this chapter considers how human-microbe relations in cheese-making in this particular social context in Croatia could be reanimated.
