What the law requires
Pre-packed cheese sold in the UK must declare on its label if the milk used was unpasteurised. The problem is that a significant portion of cheese in this country is sold loose — cut to order at a deli counter, portioned at a farmers' market, or wrapped in plain paper with nothing but a handwritten price ticket. In those cases, the legal labelling requirement produces nothing the customer can read for themselves.
At a well-run counter, the answer should be written on the batch ticket or held in the staff's product knowledge. At a busier or less specialist one, you may get a shrug. The only reliable move is to ask directly, and to ask about the specific cheese rather than the shop's general policy.
Pasteurised, thermised, raw — not the same thing
Even when a term is offered, it pays to know what it means. Pasteurisation heats milk to a defined temperature for a defined period, reducing the bacterial load to levels set by food safety regulation. Raw-milk cheese skips that process entirely; the milk goes into the vat as it came from the animal, live cultures and all.
Thermisation sits between the two. The milk is heat-treated, but at a lower temperature than full pasteurisation — enough to reduce some microbial activity, not enough to meet the pasteurisation threshold. A thermised cheese is neither raw nor pasteurised in the strict sense. A producer or cheesemonger using the term correctly is giving you precise, useful information. One using "pasteurised" when they mean "thermised" — or vice versa — is not.
If you have a specific health concern about any of these distinctions, the NHS website is the right place for guidance, not the cheese counter.
What pasteurisation does to flavour
Pasteurisation denatures some of the milk's enzymes and alters its microbial community, and both changes affect maturation. Raw-milk cheese has a more complex starting point: the microbial life native to the milk, the pasture and the specific herd all contribute to the final flavour in ways that are difficult to replicate afterwards.
That is not to say pasteurised milk produces inferior cheese. Many outstanding British cheeses are made from pasteurised milk, and skilled cheesemakers compensate for the loss of native cultures by adding carefully chosen starter cultures and controlling the make process tightly. The results can be excellent. What they tend not to be is unpredictable in the way a well-aged raw-milk cheese can be — the sharpness that develops differently batch to batch, the earthy or grassy notes that shift with the seasons.
This is why several of Britain's most distinctive cheeses, those with the most loyal followings among serious buyers, are made with raw milk. The complexity is the point. We cover the craft and tradition behind raw-milk cheesemaking in our dedicated piece on the subject.
The practical checklist
When you need to know whether a cheese is pasteurised, here is where to look:
- Pre-packed cheese: check the ingredients or back label. If the milk is unpasteurised, it must say so. No declaration generally means pasteurised milk was used.
- Counter cheese: ask the staff, and be specific — name the cheese. Request the batch ticket or point-of-sale card if one exists.
- Online or direct from a producer: the producer's own website or product description is the most reliable source. Most small British cheesemakers are explicit about this because it matters to their customers.
- Unlabelled soft cheese: treat it as unknown until you can verify. Soft, high-moisture cheeses — fresh chèvre, fromage frais, certain washed rinds — are the category where loose retail labelling is least consistent.
If a particular health context makes this question important for you or someone you are buying for, the NHS has current, specific guidance. That is not a job for a cheese label or a counter ticket.
