Discrete tastes hamper sensory standards

EU efforts to establish European-wide sensory standards for hard and slicing cheeses have collapsed due to the fact that the inhabitants of member countries have widely differing wishes when it comes to taste, smell, consistency and appearance of their cheese.
The discovery has so far taken two years to emerge and has involved research institutes in the UK, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Italy and Germany. First aims included the establishment of an international vocabulary describing the various characteristics of cheeses.
At the same time, all current European testing methods were employed parallel to each other with 12 hard and slicing cheeses in a comparison run by the Federal Institute for Milk Research in Kiel, Germany. The target there was to identify strengths and weaknesses of the different testing methods and then to amalgamate the best into a single procedure.
Although current reports indicate that progress is being made in this direction, the grand plan is now stumbling over the hurdles of national tastes and traditions. If the pan-European test programme is to work at all, warns the German institute,