Cheese-knives at dawn in Camembert

Civil war is raging in the gentle, green fields of lower Normandy. Words such as "treachery" and "betrayal" and "cheat" are being hurled over the hedgerows.

When is a Camembert not a Camembert? Should 200 years of local, cheese-making tradition be micro-filtered into oblivion in the industrial vats of the French mass-market, food industry? Or can a traditional, luscious Camembert of infinite taste occasionally make you very ill? The battle is not just local. This is part of a global struggle between authenticity and marketing; a struggle to preserve true character and individuality in a world in which "choice" increasingly means pasting on different-coloured labels.

This is also a battle between a real France and a pretend France; about the strange French habit of boasting about glorious rural and gastronomic traditions, while destroying them.

Cheese is a classic symbol of Frenchness. The quantity and variety of French cheeses - at least 700 - sums up French cussedness and culinary imagination, and yet the authentic tradition of French cheese-making, based on the use of raw, unpasteurised, milk, has been threatened for years. Raw milk, or lait cru, cheeses now represent only 5 per cent of the market in France (although their sales are slowly increasing again).

Until a few weeks ago, there were 10 sites in Normandy which made Camembert from raw milk, according to the age-old methods. Most of the Camembert sold in the world, and even in France, is a pasteurised, mechanised, pale (literally pale) imitation of the original.

A pasteurised Camembert tastes fine and rather like the last one that you ate. It looks neat and clean, like a large white pill. It costs about a euro less than a raw-milk Camembert. A "real" Camembert - with the right to call itself Appellation d'Origine Controlée(AOC), Camembert de Normandie - looks like a lightly rumpled bed. Chomping into it opens a whole landscape of taste, varying according to the time of the year it was made.

There is no reason why both types of Camembert should not continue to exist, to serve different tastes and budgets, just as with fine wines and mass market wines. The problem is that the owners of half of the remaining "traditional" Camembert sites, a large co-operative and a giant dairy company, want to change the rules of the game.

Camembert traditionalists say they want permission to cheat. Some traditionalists even say they have been cheating by heat-treating or filtering their milk quietly for years. They simply want to bring the rules in line with what they actually do.

The rebels, who make 75 per cent of all raw milk, traditional Camemberts, angrily deny such claims. They say they have concluded, with a heavy heart, that their premium, traditional brands of Camembert are unsafe. They say there is "unavoidable evidence" that "raw milk" Camemberts can, on very rare occasions, cause serious food poisoning.

Luc Morelon, director of communications for Lactalis, one of Europe's largest dairy companies, is also president of the Camembert Appellation Controlée defence committee. For years, he has sung the praises of lait cru cheese (although his group also produces vast quantities of successful, pasteurised mass-market Camembert).

Now he says: "We have done an extensive survey of the dangers [of raw milk cheeses] and we no longer want to risk putting children in hospital. Full stop. That's all." Lactalis wants to heat gently, but not quite pasteurise, the milk which goes into its four renowned, "premium" Camemberts: Lepetit, Lanquetot, Jort and Moulin de Carel, still made at their original factories in Calvados. A large dairy co-operative at Isigny, near the Calvados coast, and producer of one of the best-loved of all traditional Camemberts, wants to micro-filter its milk.

Both procedures would remove allegedly dangerous microbes but would also, traditionalists say, flatten and standardise the taste. At the same time - and here is the real source of the fury and loathing - Lactalis and Isigny want to hold on to the right to market their premium cheeses as appellation controlée, authentic Camembert de Normandie. To the traditionalists, this is akin to a top Bordeaux chateau asking for the right to use Bulgarian grapes and still label its bottles grand cru.

The other five, independent, traditional Camembert makers are furious at this "betrayal". They oppose any change in the rules and have formed their own defence committee. Go ahead and heat and filter your milk, they say, but do not confuse the customer by calling your cheeses authentic.

The organisation which administers appellations controlées in France supports them; so far. But it has commissioned an investigation into the claims, and counter-claims, of both sides. A report is expected by the end of the year. Laurent Fléchard, 36, is director of Gillot, the largest of the independent makers of traditional Camembert in the village of Saint Hilaire de Briouze in the Orne. He is a passionate and eloquent man with a face as round as one of his cheeses.

Gillot can lay claim to make the finest Camembert, and therefore one of the finest cheeses in the world. The label has won the gold medal at the Paris Concours Agricole in 13 out of the past 29 years (including this year).

"There is nothing dangerous about raw milk cheeses," M. Flechard says. "Every study suggests that raw-milk cheeses, if proper standards are maintained, are actually safer than pasteurised cheeses. In a pasteurised cheese, all the microbes are killed off, the good and the bad. If microbes attack the cheese after it leaves the factory, it is defenceless. In a raw-milk cheese, there is a natural, living balance between good and bad microbes. The good defend you against the bad."

But It is undeniable, however, that raw milk Camemberts are harder to make, especially in large quantities. Controlling the quality of unpasteurised milk is tricker. The cheeses need to be tested more often. Sometimes they have to be thrown away. "This is what this dispute is all about," M. Flechard said. "Money. Margins. You can sell an appellation controlée Camembert for more than a pasteurised one. If you could make the production process cheaper, by getting rid of the raw milk, but still have the right to call them authentic, traditional, appellation controlée Camembert, obviously you could make a lot more money.

"We don't take that view. We are passionate about what we do but we also believe that, as a small producer, we have to offer something of real quality, something authentic, if we are going to survive. The big dairy companies want everything. They want to dominate the market. They want to lay claim to all the tradition and history of French cheese industry but don't want the difficulty and expense of maintaining those traditions."

Successive French governments have paid lip service to small farmers, local traditions and quality of food production. In truth, with the honourable exception of the Lionel Jospin government (1997-2002), all French governments for 50 years have promoted large-scale, intensive farming and mass production of food, including cheese.

The traditional Camembert producers, such as Gillot, fear that the power of the industrial food lobby will force a change in the Camembert appellation rules. So far, the government officials who administer the AOC system in France - covering everything from wine to salt - are standing firm.

Under the present rules, to qualify as a Camembert de Normandie, a cheese has to fulfil several conditions. It must be made in lower Normandy, within the departéments of Calvados, Orne and Manche. The milk must come from cows that graze within 20km of the factory (to create a distinctive local character or terroir.) A large proportion of the milk must come from the lovely, brown, white and black cows of the Norman breed.

The milk must be placed into each cheese mould in five distinct operations, 45 minutes apart, either by machine or ladled by hand. This is the meaning of the words moulés à la louche, found on traditional Camembert boxes. It simply means, "placed in moulds by ladle". Finally - and most crucially - the milk must not be filtered and must not be heated to more than human body temperature, 37C.

Lactalis and Isigny are happy to maintain, even tighten, all the other AOC rules. They want the right to heat or micro-filter the milk and still sell their cheese as authentic AOC-approved.

Would this really make such a difference? Yes, says M. Fletard. Treating the milk in this way would kill the E.coli and other threatening bacteria. But it would also kill the "microbial flora" which give raw milk Camembert their distinctive taste and quality. In mass-produced, pasteurised Camembert, different flora are reintroduced later, but this is what gives them their standard taste.

"A Camembert made in this factory tastes quite different from a Camembert made by exactly the same methods in another place," M. Fletard said. "When you eat a Gillot Camembert, you are tasting the lush grass of the Orne, which gives a different taste to the grass of the Manche or Calvados. If you treated the milk, that local taste - the taste of the terroir - would be lost."

But can we take M. Gillot's word that raw milk cheese is safe? Over the years, there have been far more health scares with pasteurised cheeses than raw-milk ones. But there have been raw-milk incidents.

Sylvie Lontal, head of France's eggs and milk scientific research laboratory at Rennes, says the risk to human health from raw-milk Camembert is "infinitesimal". But Mme Lontal also makes another point. Technical advances mean it is now possible to return local "good" bacteria to cheese after it has been "micro-filtered". "This means you can almost recapture the taste of a raw-milk cheese but not quite. It is still likely that the taste will become more uniform because the diversity [of the flora] is somewhat reduced."

So there you have it. Does an infinitesimal risk of illness justify destroying 200 years of Camembert-making tradition? Or, to put it another way, does the risk, however slight, justify making Camemberts with somewhat less character and calling them authentic? M. Fletard has made his choice. So have thousands of die-hard, lait-cru Camembert eaters.

"The oddest part of the whole business," M. Fletard said, "is that Isigny and Lactalis announced they would to abandon their AOC labels until the rules are changed. But they didn't do it. Several weeks later, they are still making Camembert with raw milk, even though they say it is a hazard to human health. If they think it is dangerous, why do they continue?" The war goes on.

The Camembert necessities

* How do you know when a Camembert is ready to eat?

The traditional saying in Normandy is that "a ripe camembert squeezes like a woman's breast". But there is a more scientific test.

* Cut into the cheese and look at the width of the crusty layer in the centre. If it is "as thick as a knife blade", the camembert is perfect. If it is thicker, the cheese is not quite at its best. If there is no crusty layer, it is a little too ripe.

* A Camembert should always be stored upside down, to preserve the beauty of the top of the cheese when served. Ideally, a camembert should never be put in the fridge. If you do, take it out at least an hour before eating.

* Gourmets say that the best time for eating Camembert is during the late spring and early summer. This means that you will then be eating, via the cow and the factory, the rich flush of Norman spring grass.

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