COWS '-MILK ROQUEFORT CHEESE. 23 
handled, losses are higher, and it is far more easily damaged in 
transit. 
LOSSES IN CURING. 
The losses of cheese by scraping, brushing, and handling are 
quite heavy. With Roquefort, special brushing equipment reduces 
both the losses and the cost of manufacture. According to reports 
on the industry in France a brushing machine can brush from 4,500 
to 5,000 cheeses in an 8-hour day, and requires only two or three 
workers. With a knife a worker is able to scrape from 200 to 300 
cheeses a day. It has been found in French practice that at 
each scraping, losses are reduced from 5 per cent where a knife is 
used to one-half of 1 per cent by the use of the brushing machine. 
Without special precautions with respect to refrigeration, depending 
on the perfection of ripening, salt content, and quality of the cheese, 
the losses run from 16 to 22 per cent. In France the first scraping 
is done by machinery. Scrapings at the ripening stage are made 
by hand. Normally the cheeses are exposed to the air in the caves 
from one to four months, and it is necessary to brush them every 
10 or 15 days. In order to have a supply of cheese the year round, 
the imported cheese, which is manufactured only six or seven months 
in the year, is subjected to low temperatures of refrigeration and 
may be withdrawn according to the demands of the market. By 
this system the cheese is wrapped in foil and then subjected to a 
very low temperature. Later it is exposed to the air of the caves 
and ripened at a higher temperature. Often the cheese is held a 
year at a temperature just a little above 0° C. (32° F.). At this 
temperature practically all fermentations are checked. When again 
subjected to the air of the caves the cheese ripens with redoubled 
intensity and is more quickly broken down than when the other 
system is used and the cheese is not ripened in the foil. By the 
use of the holding system more delicate flavors are developed than 
when the cheese is ripened and shipped directly from the curing 
rooms. The practice just described reduced losses from 21 per 
cent to 9 per cent. These figures, which were given by Marre, are 
based on a comparison of approximately 869,000 pounds of cheese 
ripened without refrigeration and 1,001,000 pounds ripened with 
refrigeration. 15 
The domestic cheese is first ripened to a certain degree and put into 
the foil. The cheeses are scraped three times. There is a loss of 
3.28 per cent in the first scraping, 2.12 per cent in the second, and 
2.02 per cent in the third, making a total loss of 7.42 per cent. These 
figures were based on an arbitrary figure of 4f pounds as the average 
weight of each cheese. More than 1,000 cheeses were used in obtain- 
16 E. Marre, Le Roquefort, pp. 142-146. 
