A battle over the future of camembert came to a head Friday after French producers voted against allowing pasteurised versions of the classic raw-milk cheese.
A narrow majority of northern French cheese-makers - 53 percent - rejected a plan that would have given industrial producers the right to use the exclusive "Camembert of Normandy" label, even when using modern techniques denounced by purists.
Producers rejected the enlarged AOP (Protected Designation of Origin), Patrick Mercier, president of an association that had been pushing for the changes said in a statement.
Veronique Richez-Lerouge, a staunch opponent of the plan who heads the "Fromages de Terroirs" association, hailed Friday's vote as "very good news for all European AOPs."
"The principle of quality won out over the increased demands of dairy giants, it's a victory for taste," she said.
Agrifood giants like Lactalis, makers of the top-selling President brand, can call their creamy disks camembert.
Crucially, however, they cannot use the tastier "Camembert de Normandie AOP" label.
Supporters said the compromise struck in 2018, which was rejected Friday, would have reversed decades of declining dairy farming in Normandy, where fewer than a dozen producers still make the cheese the traditional way.
AOP producers now make just 5,500 tons of camembert a year, compared to 60,000 tons of pasteurised cheese that costs half as much or less. Mercier, one of just two producers who make raw-milk camembert from their own herd of native Normande cows, had backed the proposed changes, seeing it as a way to increase consumption of the more pungent produce.
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