New Bureau de Surveillance Fromagere to monitor AOC production levels, international cheese espionage threats, and the inexplicable popularity of processed slices abroad
French Government Declares Cheese a Strategic National Resource Requiring Ministry-Level Protection
PARIS, FRANCE — The French government has issued a decree establishing the Bureau de Surveillance Fromaère, a new body within the Ministry of Agriculture with responsibility for monitoring, protecting, and, if necessary, defending the integrity of French cheese production against what the decree describes as “les menaces internes et externes pesant sur le patrimoine fromager national,” which translates as “internal and external threats weighing on the national cheese heritage,” and which the Bureau has already identified as including industrial imitation cheese, Brexit-induced tariff barriers, and the inexplicable global popularity of processed cheese slices.
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The Bureau
The Bureau de Surveillance Fromaère will operate with a staff of 47 and an annual budget of approximately 12 million euros, and will be responsible for: monitoring AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) production compliance across France’s 45 officially designated cheese varieties; investigating and responding to international cheese fraud incidents, including the production of cheese labelled Camembert or Brie in countries that have not earned the right to these names through centuries of correct cheesemaking; liaising with Interpol on transnational dairy crime matters; and providing quarterly reports to the Ministry of Agriculture on threats to the national cheese heritage.
The last item on this list has attracted the most commentary. The concept of a government agency providing quarterly reports on threats to cheese has produced a range of reactions in France, from those who find it an entirely reasonable expression of national cultural priorities to those who find it an illustration of something specific about the French relationship with food that they are not sure any other language has a word for. The British, naturally, have a word for the institutional category represented by the Bureau. Prat as a British derogatory term is not, in this case, the correct application — the Bureau represents genuine conviction rather than confident incompetence — but prat as a classic British fool insult offers a related register that covers the person who has elevated a legitimate concern into a bureaucratic structure of a scale somewhat disproportionate to the threat, while being entirely serious about both the concern and the structure.
The Cheese Heritage
France produces approximately 1,200 distinct varieties of cheese, of which 45 hold AOC status, meaning their production is legally regulated by geography, method, and milk source. Camembert de Normandie must come from Normandy, from Normande breed cows, using traditional ladling methods. Roque fort must be aged in the natural caves of Combalou. These protections are real, legally enforceable, and genuinely important to the agricultural communities that depend on them. The Bureau de Surveillance Fromaère is, at its core, protecting something worth protecting. The quarterly reports on threats to the national cheese heritage are a reasonable mechanism for doing so. The Interpol liaison on transnational dairy crime is where it gets interesting. The Bureau has declined to specify what transnational dairy crimes it currently has on its radar. This reticence has not reduced speculation. The cheese is excellent. The surveillance is underway.
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