Can raw milk cheese and pasteurised milk cheese coexist? Unthinkable or never really considered?

Christine De Sainte Marie,François Casabianca,Morgane Millet,Claire Cerdan,Mariagiulia Mariani

doi:10.1007/s41130-020-00106-y

Abstract

This article examines the contentious issue of the coexistence of cheese made from raw milk and cheese made from pasteurised milk in areas of protected designation of origin (PDOs). The French PDO system is held to be the benchmark of the international system of geographical indications (GIs). Drawing on the multi-level perspective framework of socio-technical transitions, we conceptualise PDO cheeses as a “niche” nested within a dominant regime that promotes pasteurisation as the standard technology to control pathogens in milk. Careful examination of statistical data and the specifications for PDO cheeses shows that raw milk is experiencing an upturn in domestic production, which we relate to the reinforcement of the regulatory frameworks governing protection of GIs. We investigate more fully the steady increase in raw milk use by studying two contrasting cases of PDO cheeses (Saint-Nectaire and Ossau-Iraty), in which the confrontation between technologies is internalised. Analysis of local innovation pathways highlights a series of key decisions that strengthen the position of raw milk from the farm to the marketplace, namely grass-feeding, limiting herd productivity, technology-specific identification marks, and redistribution of decision-making power among stakeholders. Regulatory mechanisms that counterbalance the pressures of the regime by strategic management of the “terroir” niche are identified and discussed. We argue that shifting the focus from niche/regime interaction towards the internal dynamics of niches sheds light on the conditions of a coexistence of apparently antagonistic models of production in agri-food networks.

Highlights

In 2018 a turning point was reached in the so-called “Camembert war” being fought over the status of the iconic French cheese
Normandy Camembert is a cheese made from raw milk that was awarded a protected designation of origin (PDO) in 1983
Institutional mediation led to a compromise proposal: the industrial producers would give up the indication “Made in Normandy” and those using raw milk would accept that cheese made from pasteurised milk was entitled to the PDO, in return for baseline specifications on milk production and the cheese-making process

Summary

Introduction

In 2018 a turning point was reached in the so-called “Camembert war” being fought over the status of the iconic French cheese. In the early 2000s, the dairy multinational Lactalis and the cooperative of Isigny, which account for 80% of the total production of Camembert, were pressing for the designation to allow the cheese to be made from pasteurised milk, on the grounds of safeguarding consumer health (Sciolino, 2007). As a result, they decided to no longer use the designation of origin, preferring instead the term “Made in Normandy”, which means that the cheese-making factory is located in the administrative region of Normandy (Casalegno and Laske, 2016). Raw-milk cheese-makers, a large number of whom use milk from Normande cows raised on Normandy grasslands, would have a distinctive label on their product indicating that it is “véritable” Camembert de Normandie (“genuine” Normandy Camembert)

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