Many of Wisconsin’s federal lawmakers signed a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration questioning recently finalized standards limiting the level of non-toxigenic E. coli allowed in raw milk cheese.

These lawmakers and some producers are worried about how the stricter standard could affect cheese production.

Non-toxigenic E. coli is not a bacteria that causes illness but it’s measured to test the overall cleanliness of cheese.

Before a 2009 rewrite of the regulations, the FDA allowed up to 10,000 colony-forming units per gram. But now they’ll take disciplinary action if a product contains over 10 units of the bacteria in three out of five samples.

Licensed cheesemaker Marieke Penterman makes gouda from raw milk. She said unpasteurized cheese has to age longer to meet those standards.

“That’s going to have a tremendous (economic) impact for a lot of smaller cheese creameries like us that cannot afford to have so much cheese, aging cheese in our inventory,” she said.