Report of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) on the effectiveness of maturation for more than 60 days for goat's cheese and cheese from other species produced from raw milk from herds where tuberculosis is detected, in order to ensure their safe consumption

*This record is given in both English and Spanish

Royal Decree 1086/2020 which regulates and makes flexible certain conditions for applying the European Union’s provisions on hygiene in the production and marketing of food products and regulates activities excluded from its area of application, permits the flexibility included in European Union regulations to be applied at the national level and to use milk from herds that do not fulfil the requirements with regard to brucellosis and tuberculosis, with the same requirements as in Regulation (EC) No. 853/2004.
In the case of ovine and caprine herds that do not fulfil the requirements for tuberculosis, the Regulation opens the doors to other possible processing methods that ensure food safety. Therefore, the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN) has been requested to establish if maturation for a period greater than 60 days for cheeses produced with
raw goat’s milk or from other species sensitive to tuberculosis other than bovine, from females that do not have a positive reaction to tuberculosis tests or display symptoms of this disease but belong to a herd where it has been detected, may ensure the safety of these cheeses with regard to tuberculosis.
The Scientific Committee concludes that although the prevalence of tuberculosis in Europe is low, the global importance of this disease requires extreme precautions for monitoring the main sources of contagion, raw milk and dairy products being one of the main source of contamination in persons.
The special resistance of the causative agents of tuberculosis are one of the main reasons for its survival in dairy products, there being few differences between them with regard to the species that produces the milk.
Both classical references as well as more recent literature on the topic has established the survival of the causative agents of tuberculosis for periods greater than 60 days. For this reason, it cannot be guaranteed that maturation for a period greater than 60 days eliminates the members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.