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Camembert Tests `Raw' Rule in Appellation d'Origine

When is a Camembert not a real Camembert?

When it isn't made with raw milk, says Bertrand Gillot, owner of Camembert maker Fromagerie Reaux.

Larger industrial makers of the white, creamy cheese have asked the government to extend the Appellation d'Origine Controlee designation -- France's gastronomic stamp of approval -- to Camembert made from pasteurized milk, saying it's safer. Pasteurizing does away with the need for repeated tests for bacteria, and the AOC label fetches higher prices.

``They just want the image of the AOC without the costs,'' Gillot, 67, said, as he surveyed the vats of milk collected from 65 farms around his factory in the Normandy town of Lessay, within sight of the English Channel. Gillot spends 11 percent of his revenue on testing milk and cheese.

The disagreement has sparked a battle for the French palate, with large cheese makers such as Groupe Lactalis, Europe's biggest, trying to shake up centuries-old customs. Traditional Camembert makers and cheese aficionados say change will destroy a savor developed in the late 1700s.

``Pasteurized milk is dead milk and you don't make a good Camembert with dead milk,'' said Steve , a connoisseur and head of the cheese department at New York's Fairway Markets. ``I'm an absolute fanatic about Camembert. There is no more complex flavor in the world of food.''

Pasteurization requires temperatures of 72 degrees Celsius (162 degrees Fahrenheit) or more, while milk heated to no more than 37 degrees is considered raw. In between is a process called thermalization.

The U.S. bans raw-milk Camembert as unsafe.

Label Matters

The French government's food certification body, INAO, will deliver its verdict on the label this summer. Nairaud, INAO's deputy director, said a 50-member committee is reviewing the rules, seeking to ensure that products preserve regional ``typicality.'' France has 1,000 kinds of cheese, with many still made using age-old methods.

In the last decade, INAO has allowed the AOC label for Livarot and l'Epoisses de Bourgogne cheeses made with thermalized milk. It has yet to do so for a Camembert.

A visit to a Monoprix supermarket in Paris shows why the AOC label matters. A store brand Camembert costs 1.34 euros ($2.08). The country's top-selling industrial brand, Lactalis's President Camembert, goes for 1.89 euros. In contrast, the three AOC offerings fetch 2.67 euros to 2.90 euros.

The AOC labels are similar to the ones that distinguish a grand cru wine from the table variety.

The two largest industrial Camembert producers, Lactalis and Isigny-Sainte-Mer, stopped making AOC Camembert last year, cutting France's AOC Camembert production by 69 percent to 4,000 tons a year. About 118,670 tons of Camembert-type cheeses were made in France in 2005, according to the National Interprofessional Dairy Center in Paris.

``The safety of our consumers is better assured by pasteurization,'' said Luc Morellon, a spokesman for Lactalis.

Open Battle

The battle intensified after Lactalis issued a statement in March saying it found bacteria in some Reaux Camembert.

``We just thought it was our responsibility to warn the authorities,'' Morellon said.

Gillot said Reaux's own tests were negative.

``It was a nasty and irresponsible attack to punish us for being one of the fervent defenders of raw milk,'' Gillot said.

Reaux has annual sales of 15 million euros, compared with 9.6 billion euros for Lactalis. In 2005, six children were hospitalized after eating Reaux Camembert infected with E. Coli. Production was shut for several weeks, Reaux said.

``The risk of raw-milk cheese is minimal if you are working in small batches and respect basic sanitation,'' said Sylvie Lortal, director of the laboratory in Rennes of INRA, the French food-safety body. ``It's obviously harder to control if you're working with large quantities, so the real issue in this dispute is commercial, not safety.''

About 11 percent of French cheese is made with raw milk. ``If it were dangerous, we'd know about it,'' Lortal said.

Painstaking Process

Reaux tests for bacteria at farms where its milk is produced and again at its factory. The 11,000 liters (2,900 gallons) of milk collected each day sit for 24 hours in vats, after which they are heated to 37 degrees. Rennet, an extract from calves' stomachs, is added to curdle the milk. Once the liquid reaches the consistency of runny creme caramel, the vats are rolled into another room and the contents are ladled into 1,470 metal cylinders.

On the following day, the rounds are salted and placed in cold storage for two weeks, during which the cheese firms up and the characteristic white mold forms. After another week in a warmer room it is packed into individual wooden containers and shipped.

Gillot at Reaux said he has no plans to move toward pasteurizing or thermalizing his company's cheese because the processes kill the milk's ferments -- good and bad.

``We sell to big supermarkets, small stores, and we export as far away as Japan,'' he said. ``What's the problem? Why change?''

By Viscusi

To contact the reporter on this story: Viscusi in Paris at gviscusi@....