Something cheesy: the latest threat to the French way of life

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Link (The Economist).

Reactions, opinions? Cheese made with unpasteurized milk is losing ground to the standardized stuff in France and that's a real sad state of affairs.

Back in the late 90s I spent some time making cheese in the mountains (the high quality AOC cheese that requires craftsmanship and not the industrialized standardized stuff) so I'm very concerned by this issue.

Don't forget to check the slideshow at the bottom of the page. Who said cheese can't be sexy?

 

The solution is simple: follow the model of America's chocolate companies. You just need your FDA (or whatever the equivalent is) to define 'cheese' as a product of unpasteurized milk. All the foreign companies that use pasteurized milk will no longer be able to call their product 'cheese' (or 'fromage').

On a side note, does anyone else see the irony in the French falling 'victim' to the French technique of pasteurization?

 

That's not a bad idea but cheese making processes vary a lot. The fabrication is ruled by the AOC regulations so people who buy high quality cheese know that the cheese they're buying is made with milk from the region where this cheese originates from and that the cheese has been made in the traditional way. So to me cheese with the AOC label is the only "real" cheese. In other words if you want to buy a good French cheese you have to look for the AOC label.

Furthermore some cheese are actually made with pasteurized milk. I may not be a big fan of these cheese but it has a few advantages, the main being that it can be shipped more easily whereas unpasteurized cheese require more care (at all the stages). Pasteurized milk is not reserved to foreign companies (actually the article is not very clear about that but it states that some French companies are making Italian and Greek cheese -by the way Mozarella like many other cheese can be made with pasteurized and unpasteurized milk).

The point is that cheese made with unpasteurized milk demands more work because your "raw material" is not standardized and will vary depending on the quality of the milk. The fromager (French for cheesemaker) I used to work for always said that he liked the variety because it never failed to bring some interesting problems that had to be solved.

Many things can change milk quality including what the cows (or ewes) have been eating so milk and cheese vary depending on the different seasons. AOC labels regulate a geographical area that limits the origin of the milk (it may also indicate the altitude which is an important factor) and in some cases it also regulates the type of cows (some cheese are made exclusively with the milk of certain cows).

Making cheese with unpasteurized milk is all about growing the right type of bacteria in the cheese so only this type develops. It's much easier to work with pasteurized milk because you don't run into unforeseen problems and you don't have to be as careful with the microbiological flora (you eliminate all bacteria in an undiscriminating manner).

Obviously if a cow is sick and it's been given antibiotics it won't affect pasteurized milk but it will ruin the batch of unpasteurized milk because antibiotics will kill the bacteria. Unfortunately some farmers are rather unscrupulous. They have a high incentive for following regulations because AOC milk is much more expensive than regular milk and the price is dependent on milk quality (mainly fat quantity, each batch being tested in a lab to measure milk quality that will indicate the exact price of the litre in the predefined price range).

@NOG: what about the calendar? That was a rather surprising initiative to me (I have to get a copy of this calendar). It's not something that we are used to when dealing with cheese.

 

I love French cheese. I love all cheese (except edam). Brie on a pizza ROCKS! (Sorry, should that be roques? )

 

Never had Brie on a pizza.

I'm not a big fan of Edam either. No offense to our Dutch friends but t's a bit too bland for my taste.

"Roque" is only used when playing chess, it's the word we use for castling. Roquefort is actually the name of a place.

 

@Caradhras, what other cheeses would you recommend for a fan of sharp Canadian cheddar?

(Also, adding scantily clad women into the good cheese mix may lead to sensory overload ... )

 

I don't like Edammer either, but you should try Old Farmer Cheese (Oude boerenkaas) which is made by hand, with raw milk. And it's old when it has been ripening for at least 2 years.

 

Hmm...I guess the Roque comment would go down better as an audio thing...damn the internet!

dmc - You don't know how cheese and sex go togetrher?? You must shower a LOT then

 

No cheese is better than Cheez Whiz!

 

For sex or eating?

 

European competition laws prevent France from doing such reforms, if they are to be done they will be done on EU level and quite frankly I don't see much of a chance of that happening.

Quite frankly I don't care about the issue that much. I guess it goes to show that there really is not a market for all kinds of cheese any more and that they are being out competed.

 

Meh, sex sells. That it hasn't been used to sell cheese that much just indicates how low the competitive edge in cheese marketing has been.

 

Not a big fan of cheddar myself but I'd suggest giving comté a try. The good stuff has a green bell label on the side (it means it got at the very least a grade of 15 out of 20).

IMO there is nothing wrong with adding scantily clad women when advertizing cheese, it's rather tasteful.

I couldn't live without some unpasteurized cheese in my diet. You're missing out on all the good stuff. Take a trip to France! We obnoxious frogs are not that bad when you get to know us.

Cheese fits in rather well actually since we usually have wine with our cheese. Drinking wine helps with the "scantily clad" part.

Sounds really good. If I take a trip to the Netherlands I'll be sure to try some of this Old Farmer Cheese. Thanks for the suggestion!

I know that Americans use Roquefort to make sauces but that stuff seems ghastly. My mind numbs at the mere evocation of such a thing.

Aren't there body oils for such a use? Do we have to bring cheese into this?

Of course what you say is correct and that would never happen (and it's most certainly better as it is now because that would be a very artificial and unfair way to try and solve this issue). It's just that pasteurized cheese get a larger part nowadays whereas the good stuff is not necessarily eaten on an everyday basis. Price is also a factor as good cheese can be rather costly (unless you have a strong cheese connection like I do ).

Cheaper cheese that are easier to make take precedence for regular meals it doesn't mean that the good stuff doesn't have its place. I'd be sad if the cheese I love (and I don't mean that in any weird way Blades and Splunge) would end up becoming some sort of luxury product.

What the article points out is that people in France are no longer eating like they used to so cheaper lower quality pasteurized cheese are taking a larger chunk of the market. I'm not too worried though. After all we have many Mc Donald's restaurants over here but that doesn't mean we don't appreciate French cuisine anymore. If you're in a hurry you can't take 90 minutes to eat in a restaurant. It's convenience versus quality and I think the same principle applies to French cheese.

I fully understand that not everyone will react as I do because to most people cheese isn't that important. To me it's a very important and serious thing and that is why I posted this in the Alleys.

Probably true. I mean, in my experience cheese sells itself. I'm guessing that's an original attempt to get more attention from the public and make cheese looks sexy. As far as I'm concerned it's working.

Here is a link to a little game: http://www.jeux-geographiques.com/jeux-geographiques-Les-fromages-de-France-_pageid80.html all you have to do is try and find the area from where the cheese comes from. It's really hard at times. Fair warning, it's in French but it's rather straightforward.

 

Eeew. You put sweat in your cheese?

 

When you're making cheese in a traditional manner it's a lot of hard work. It's very physical and you don't need to go to the gym. Depending on the type it can weigh up to 40 kg and you have to do a lot of lifting. It also means working the batch of milk with rake like tools that require both strength and precision. You also have to work long hours, starting at four in the mornig until one in the afternoon (and someone has to check the cheese later on in the afternoon). Too much work for little money that's why people who work in this line of work are usually very passionate about it. It's a labour that requires love because of all those constraints but it's also a labour in which you can take pride in making a really great product. So yes, sweat is involved.

 

Carad, involved, yes, but hopefully not as an ingredient..

Much in the way as you as a French can't possibly have avoided the joke about some less than stellar wines "tasting like the poor guy trampling the grapes suffered of foot fungus."

I guess the finer types of cheese go through what has happened to many other luxury products - they're slowly but surely replaced by cheaper, "almost as good" alternatives as the huge masses won't know the difference anyway. Especially if the change comes packaged with drastically longer/easier storage limits.

Just take a look at tea. It's not completely without reason that one of the above average quality levels of it (TGFOP) is commonly and humorously thought to mean "too good for ordinary people".

All this means in the long run that becoming (or remaining as) a connoisseur of something means to take refuge in specialty stores instead of the vast hypermarkets. Too bad for the wallet, but quite possibly better in terms of availability.

 

I don't really feel for the French cheesemakers on the issue. In a years of economic downturn, is a 2% decrease in consumption that startling - or, for that matter, representative?

Perhaps a few families here and there opted for cheaper alternatives because their budget was tight. Hardly the bell tolling for the French traditional fromagers .

 

I never heard of that joke before to be honest.

The issue may not be that dire but it's a sad turns of events nevertheless. I was lucky enough to grow up in an area where cheese is a major tradition so I've learned to appreciate it (many people in France don't). I still have a lot to learn about wine though.