Lawmakers from each side of the aisle are urging federal regulators to reconsider revised standards for cheeses made from unpasteurized milk.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently altered its threshold for non-toxigenic E. coli, a harmless bacteria that is used to test raw milk cheese samples for cleanliness.
Previous regulations allowed as many as 10,000 colony-forming units of the bacteria in each gram of cheese, but newly released agency guidelines said that regulators would crack down if testing found more than 10 units in three out of five samples.
Twenty-four members of Congress, led by the Vermont delegation, argued in a letter to the FDA that the new regulations are inconsistent with international standards and could endanger artisan cheese producers throughout the country.
"Such a drastic step would only be justified were these cheeses presenting a demonstrable public health risk, which, to date, we have not seen evidence of," the lawmakers wrote.
The letter added that testing for that variety of E. coli does not mitigate the risk of more dangerous pathogens.
Cheesemakers, meanwhile, said that the new limits would require more money for testing and force them to age their cheeses for longer periods of time.
"That's going to have a tremendous impact for a lot of smaller cheese creameries like us that cannot afford to have so much cheese, aging cheese in our inventory," Marieke Penterman, who produces gouda cheese from raw milk, told Wisconsin Public Radio.