EU HYGIENE REGULATIONS THREATEN TRADITIONAL FRENCH CHEESES

PARIS July 10, 2005 (Telegraph) - The Association Fromages de Terroir, a group set up to protect the 1,000 different cheeses traditionally made in France, says that at least 50 varieties have disappeared in the past 30 years and many more are on their way out.

Véronique Richez-Lerouge, the association's president, blames draconian EU regulations for strangling the production of cheeses made with unpasteurised milk. "Of course there have to be hygiene standards but you can't produce cheese in a laboratory," she says.

"Brussels says this or that is dangerous and encourages bacteria and France trembles and introduces the rules. It's an enormous problem."

Cheese, of course, is the putrescent product of bacterial action on milk. James Joyce got it exactly right when the meditating Leopold Bloom characterizes cheese as the corpse of milk.

Like scores of other French cheeses, Vacherin d'Abondance will die out - a victim, say French devotees, of mass production and European Union regulations.

Mrs Gagneux had to change the centuries-old method of making cheese after a 1992 EU directive forcing her out of her kitchen and into a dairy.

That change cost the family €150,000 (£105,000) - a prohibitive sum. Even in a good year when they produced 400 cheeses a month between November and March (10 times more than today) the family never made more than €7,000 (£4,900).

"It's not just a question of money but of methods," she said. "Pasteurising makes for bland and mediocre cheese, but because of unfounded hysteria over bacteria such as listeria, which is not dangerous except to particular vulnerable groups, we are killing a fabulous product."

PFFT: EU kow-tow 5 | Rayonnement français 1