If you come across a wedge of Valbert cheese, grab it. Fromagerie Lehmann, in the tiny Lac St. Jean town of Hébertville, has stopped producing this artisanal raw-milk farmhouse cheese, with its earthy aroma and buttery hazelnut flavour. A few kilograms of the award-winning Valbert are left in specialty cheese shops. But after that there will be no more.

Food safety experts may allow the sale of some locally made unpasteurised milk cheeses. Cheese aficionados claim heating and pasteurising milk destroys the cheese's flavour-giving bacteria and that dangerous bacteria such as listeria can live in any soft cheeses, including those that are pasteurised.

Does raw milk do a body good? Despite health warnings, some people think so -- and they're going to great lengths to get it. The unpasteurized, straight-from-the-udder product is illegal to sell in Illinois stores. But it's not illegal to drink. And city slickers are increasingly seeking out the $6-a-gallon, farm-fresh product they say is key to their healthy lifestyles.

There is a reason Louis Pasteur is famous. His experiments proved that microorganisms like bacteria can cause disease, and he developed a process - pasteurization - that stops or slows the growth of bacteria in beverages such as wine, beer and milk.