by
Liz Thorpe

I got back from France a few weeks ago. I'd expected Obama chatter, with crowds gathered over inauguration footage. Then again, I'd also expected inside smoking to be legal. The times are a-changin' in good old France. The folks I was hanging with (admittedly, cheese people) were talking about one thing, and one thing only.
Roquefort with a 300% import tariff. That's up from the 100% that was imposed in 1999. To put it in the numbers we look at when importing:

Roquefort costs 11 Euros/kilo, or 5.00 Euros/pound.

Then we take a small hammering on our currency, so that 5.90 E becomes $6.50/pound

We have to transport it from southern France to the port of Le Havre, where it's loaded onto a refrigerated container for a transatlantic boat ride. Harbor fees, customs entry and transport tack on $1.40/pound.

So the Roquefort is now $7.90/pound.

And then there's the import tariff. At 100%, the cost of the Roquefort doubles to $15.80.
Roquefort is suddenly $25.99-$36.99/pound at the cheese counter, when it could have been $19.99/ pound MAXIUM.

The 300% tariff that goes into effect on March 22 will turn the cost of that very same cheese from $7.90/pound to $31.60/pound, and typical retails in the $60/pound range.

Insane. Ridiculous. And why? Why? Everyone in France was decrying the tariff, the Bush administration, the great injustice dealt to small shepherds whose sheep produce the milk that becomes Roquefort. But no one was talking about why the tariff increase was imposed in the first place, and that's the most insane thing of all.

This was GWB's great retaliation for the European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Not explicitly, of course, but when the EU continued to refuse our feedlot-raised, corn-, hormone- and antibiotic-stuffed beef, we lobbed this taxation their way. I've not read very much about the fact that when the entire European Union refuses a food of which the average American consumes 64 pounds per year, perhaps we may want to reconsider our methods. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan is far more articulate and thorough than I can hope to be in his investigation of America's corn-bloated cows. They are brought to market three times faster than their grass-fed counterparts (the hormones are a big help here), and their relative health is maintained, though they be packed together on concrete, with liberal, daily doses of preventative antibiotics. And when the Europeans have the audacity to Just Say No to our prize steer, we respond by taxing some the oldest and most traditional foodstuffs on our planet: French truffles, foie gras (what the Bushies called "fatty livers of ducks and geese") and other delicacies suffered a hit as well, but no single product was attacked like Roquefort.

2100 farmers in the economically repressed area of southern France where Roquefort-sur-Soulzon is located will take the blow when we, the third largest export market for Roquefort, dries up overnight. My French colleagues seemed sure that we could expect a remarkable glut of inventive, fatty, spicy and delicious blues coming out of southern France in the coming months, for it is only the name-protected Roquefort to which the tariff applies. I wonder who will make this ancient cheese, the first to receive A.O.C. status, and not call it Roquefort. Anyone who wants to stay in business, I wager.

For our part at Murray's, we loaded up and hope our stock can last us through the beginning of May. It's a double bummer because we had just decided to change from the Vieux Berger brand we've carried for years to the Delice d'Argental brand we only first tasted in early January. Now is your chance to try them both, because they'll be gone in weeks, and we will have to make due with the (admittedly superlative) sheep blue Persille de Malzieu , from Roquefort's neighboring town of Malzieu-ville. Make due that is until new neighboring blues are invented, ready for market far south of $60/pound.