When certain Chicago cheese dealers meet Dr. F. E. Wynekoop, assistant city bacteriologist, there will be something doing in the cheese line. It is not Dr. Wynekoop's fault altogether, but the fair name of Roquefort cheese has been stained and it is loud for redress. The cheese dealers have taken Dr. Wynekoop's address and will see about it.
    The weapons may be Limburger at forty paces or Camembert at twenty. In Kentucky the health officer of Louisville has unlimbered his artillery on Limburger, and the discussion of the proposition that this brand has too many injurious bacilli in it has put the Chicago cheese men and the bacteriologists at outs on another question, which is:
    How does Roquefort cheese get its green spots?

    Dr. Wynekoop says the green is the work of panicillium glaucium, a bacillus which is especially cultured for this business.
    John G. Neumeister, a cheese expert and dealer, says it is the fermentation of cracker crumbs in good goats' milk.
    The thing that "gets busy" in Limburger, against which the Louisville health authorities are going, is bacillus aromatic. It has not been found injurious. Neither has panicillium glaucium, which is the cause of the Roquefort disturbance in Chicago. Bacteriologists say none of the organisms found in cheese is known positively to be dangerous.

    But the cheese men do not like the statement that there is a bacillus culture adjunct to the cheese making business.
    "It's quite a business," said Dr. Wynekoop, "the raising of these organisms. They are cultured in beef tea and put into the cheese, making the green spots."
    "There's nothing of the kind," said Mr. Neumeister. "Well, I should say not. It's cracker crumbs. Say, now, what does he mean by talking about bug culture in the making of cheese. I'll just take his address."
    So there is apt to be something doing over Roquefort cheese.

    Both cheese men and bacteriologists agree on the swarms of bacilli in cheese and the latter admit that there has been nothing discovered harmful in them. As to Kentucky Limburger, that is another question. It is admitted that Health Officer Allen of Louisville may be right. One Chicago man testifies that he carried some Kentucky Limburger into a crowded street car in Louisville one day and everybody got out. When he discovered this he threw the cheese away. It fell in the yard of a handsome residence. The next day when he passed by he noticed that the house was for rent.
    Even Mr. Neumeister admits that in the old days of Limburger manufacture he used to be able to break up a gambling game in a place next to his by stacking Limburger up against the partition wall between his salesrooms and the gambling-room. This may have been the origin of the warning, "Cheese it."

    To the statements concerning germ culture for cheese, Secretary Pritchard of the Health department adds one relative to a process for the changing of American tobacco to Havana tobacco. An inventive man has discovered the bacillus which gives Havana tobacco its peculiar flavor. He raises these germs and transforms good American tobacco into imported Havana cigars.

Source:

Unknown, "Riot in Cheese Scented, Slander on Roquefort Brand Resented by Friends," The Chicago Daily, Chicago, Saturday, 15 March 1902, p. 3.