Paris blog: Cheese threatens Obama's French honeymoon

Forget al-Qaeda, world peace and the stricken economy: France wants President Obama to call off a new American attack on cheese or face retaliation against that great symbol of US power — Coca-Cola.

The wrangle over Roquefort may not be at the top of the new President's in-tray, but French farmers and the Government say that he risks losing the goodwill of their country if he fails to deflect a parting swipe from the Bush Administration.

Last Thursday, Washington tripled an already punitive duty on the pungent cheese to punish Europe for maintaining a 12-year-old ban on US hormone-fed beef. The move was seen in France as an act of petty revenge for its failure to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — a stance that popularised the French-bashing nickname “cheese-eating surrender-monkeys”.

The Americans slapped punitive duties on an array of other EU food imports, including fruit, chocolate and chewing gum, but none was subject to the 300 per cent reserved for Roquefort.

Michel Barnier, the Agriculture Minister, called on Mr Obama to reverse the measure, which revived a decade-old feud over the cheese — and, more broadly, the battle between US junk food and Gallic gastronomy. “I hope that he will avoid mediocre little measures such as the one just taken against Roquefort,” Mr Barnier said.

France is to protest to the World Trade Organisation over the anti-cheese measure. Philippe Folliot, a centrist MP for the area around the village of Roquefort, called for a super-tax against Coca-Cola.

Jose Bové, France's campaigning sheep farmer, threatened a follow-up to his 1999 destruction of a McDonald's restaurant. His bulldozer assault on the restaurant at Millau, in the southern Massif Central, turned him into a celebrity and anti-capitalist hero.

“If Obama maintains the supertax, then we will find a new symbolic target,” Mr Bové, who was a producer of ewe's milk at the time of his 1999 stunt, said.

Roquefort producers have kept a foothold in the US market despite the 100 per cent tax over the past decade. Only 400 tonnes a year — 2 per cent of their production - goes to America, where it is a luxury food. Their hopes of expanding will be scuttled if the Obama Administration confirms the new duty, which is to take effect in March.

Some producers said that they had few illusions, since a Democratic administration under Bill Clinton imposed the first Roquefort tax. Paris is insisting that the ban on US hormone-fed beef will remain, for health reasons.

Food of legend

— Roquefort was discovered, legend says, when a young shepherd abandoned his lunch of curd to chase a girl. When he failed to catch her he returned to eat his now mouldy food

— It is made from the milk of Lacaune ewes and ripened in the caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon

— Diderot, the French philosopher, gave it the title King of Cheeses in 1782

Sources: www.frenchentree.com ; www.cheese-france.com

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