Considerations

French tra­di­tional cheeses dying out?  Say it ain’t so!

Still another vic­tim of globalization.

Don’t get me wrong: glob­al­iza­tion has its perks, and I’m not going to be riot­ing at G8 or WTO con­fer­ences any­time in the fore­see­able future, but Big Gov­ern­ment, Big Ag, and super­mar­kets are killing small farms and diver­sity of palate.

The old phrase “à cha­cun son goût” (each to his or her own taste) is rapidly los­ing mean­ing.  The arti­cle calls this phe­nom­e­non “the creep­ing homog­e­niza­tion of the global palate.”  They also allude to the causes, but it seems, they take them for granted.

First, Big Gov­ern­ment: Yes, thanks to pas­teur­iza­tion, beer is now safe to drink (the orig­i­nal pur­pose), and you have some guar­an­tee that your milk is TB-free.  On the other hand, gov­ern­ments are killing the folks that pro­duce raw milk and raw milk prod­ucts though health mea­sures of dubi­ous value and sub­si­diza­tion of Big Ag.  That La Belle France has allowed this to hap­pen chez eux is a travesty.

Sec­ond, Big Ag.  Accord­ing to the arti­cle, 14% of French fam­ily farms dis­ap­peared between 2000 and 2004, leav­ing just over 100,000 at that point.  “Dozens” of arti­sanal, family-made cheeses have been lost.

In our own coun­try, and of course our coun­try is the global leader in global cor­po­ra­ti­za­tion, over 80% of our agri­cul­ture is owned by a hand­ful of cor­po­ra­tions.  Big Ag con­tributes to global warm­ing and is fight­ing the cli­mate change bill.  What’s ironic is that they con­tinue to use family-farm iconog­ra­phy when they speak to the public.

What’s real is that a quar­ter of the prod­ucts in a gro­cery store are made from corn, and corn is used in every­thing from ethanol to gyp­sum wall­board to shoe pol­ish to tex­tiles.  All this, while dairy farm­ers go broke and sell their farms.

Finally, the super­mar­ket.  I live in a small town in a small agri­cul­tural state.  We have a mar­ket in town.  It’s a co-op.  It has about 99% of what I need in any given week, from toi­let paper to tor­tilla chips.  There are a few things they don’t have, things I gen­er­ally just do without.

I go to a school that’s top-ranked for its envi­ron­men­tal focus.  Most of the stu­dents are what you’d call “greens” and are lefter than Den­nis Kucinich.  Yet, where do they do their gro­cery shop­ping?  20 miles away in a strip-development town that’s only acces­si­ble by car – even once you’re there.

It’s time for a change, folks.  Big Ag, Big Gov­ern­ment, and an obses­sion with “con­ve­nience” and “low prices” is mak­ing us fat­ter, killing the envi­ron­ment, and destroy­ing com­pe­ti­tion, the key­stone of cap­i­tal­ism.  You can fight these trends by buy­ing local, par­tic­i­pat­ing in gov­ern­ment, and more or less just THINKING about where the stuff you buy comes from and from whom you buy it.

(Michael Pol­lan, thank­fully, has writ­ten exten­si­bly and acces­si­bly about these phe­nom­ena, and the tide may be begin­ning to turn, but cer­tainly not quick enough for me or for those fancy French cheeses).

Also, if you care about good cheese and pou­vez lire le Français, or if you just want to see a funny cal­en­dar with pinup girls + cheese, visit the Asso­ci­a­tion Fro­mages de Ter­roirs.  Si vouz aimez le fro­mage, il faut le sauver du corporatisme!

Now Avail­able: E-Book down­load: “Let­ters from Israel: An Amer­i­can journalist’s adven­tures in the Holy Land.“

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