Roquefort cheese the new caviar? That’s what food loving Americans fear ever since former President Bush, in one of his last official acts, slapped a 300% tax on the famous blue cheese. Soon feverish petitions, some evoking timeless images of shepherds tending sheep, began circulating -- on Facebook, on thepetitionsite.com, and in mass emailings to members of political action groups -- urging President Obama to rescind the tariff and exhorting all food lovers to eat Roquefort on National Cheese Day which, if I'm not mistaken, is today. This Tuesday, Democrats Abroad-France will vote on a resolution put forward by the Toulouse Chapter calling on the President to "correct this wrong-headed policy" before coming to Strasbourg on Friday.
Is this not a noble cause? In a word, No. As someone who has been writing about and defending authentic French foods and wines for over 25 years, I feel that there are issues far worthier of our passion, energy and political muscle than the price of Roquefort in the United States.
My apathy is based on my belief that the tariff – which I agree is unfair – will really only affect one large dairy company, Lactalis, and that Roquefort, the very first cheese to receive appellation controllée status, ain’t what it used to be.
A subdivision of Lactalis -- Société -- alone, accounts for anywhere from 60% to 80% of production, depending on your source. And Lactalis, with plants around the world, including two in Wisconsin, is the largest producer of cheese in Europe and second only to Danone in the agroalimentaire sector. The company processes 22 million liters of milk every day, turning it into such shelf-hogging brands as Président, Bridel, and Lou Pérac, the tv commercials for which, as seductive as they are misleading, would be odds-on favorites to win Clio Awards.
Lactalis is quite capable of doing its own lobbying.
Additionally, very little, if any, Roquefort is made by ancestral methods today. The 'blueing' is almost always provoked by the addition of Penicillium roquefortii during the cheesemaking process, rarely by the original method of employing mold that had naturally formed on rye bread. And the cheeses are matured in such a way that they can be put on a market in a shorter time – and held for a longer time -- than if made by strictly traditional methods. And then there’s the increasing uniformity of flavor brought about by the European Union’s emphasis on extreme hygiene.
Besides, the USA accounts for only about 2% of Roquefort exports. Perhaps more crucial to the well-being of the farmers who supply the milk purchased by companies like Lactalis are issues having nothing to do with the United States at all.
Before Bush’s tariff inspired what the French press is depicting as industry-wide ire, farmers were demonstrating against Lactalis because of the low prices it pays for milk, for the war it appears to be waging on raw milk cheeses, as well as for its creation of pasteurized, non-appellation cheeses that impersonate Roquefort, notably a blue veined version of Lou Pérac, which will not only eat into Roquefort’s shelf-space but permit Lactalis to pay farmers even less for their milk.
The creation of imitation appellation cheeses aside, the current output of ewe’s milk in the authorized zone exceeds the needs of the dairies producing Roquefort. The surplus goes into products like French "Feta" -- Lactalis’s Salakis -- and the farmers earn less per liter for milk so used than they do for milk used for an appellation cheese like Roquefort.
My hunch is that these commercial practices are more hurtful to the small farmer than Bush’s tariff. Indeed, you might even argue that Bush did the industrial dairies a favor by deflecting the anger of the farmers away from them.
Yet the French find it convenient to blame America. The tax is seen as a way of punishing France for its refusal to import hormone-treated beef from the USA, which it probably is. And editorialists in the French press as well as politicians in the départment of the Aveyron, where Roquefort is made, depict the tariff as yet another battle in the ongoing war of MacDo-culture against the venerable traditions of French gastronomy.
It’s easy to make McDonald’s the poster child of the malbouffe, an all-purpose French neologism for any junk food dietary habits that might arguably have been inspired by America. But the malbouffe starts right here in France where, for example, most cheeses are pasteurized – and that without any pressure from the United States. At the supermarket Leclerc in Chinon, for example, I recently saw 20 or more different "Camemberts" on display including several "lite" versions. Only one – ONE – was made with raw milk and by the ancestral method of being ladled by hand into its mold, or moulé à la louche.
Faced with increasingly Draconian requirements by the European Union combined with price-cutting demands by hypermarchés, monopolistic practices by industrial dairies like Lactalis, as well as the ‘dumbing down’ of tastebuds as consumers – including the French – become accustomed to blandness and begin to fear flavor, a world of gorgeously stinky cheeses and other characterful foods is in very real danger of extinction. That’s the battle I want to fight.