News so grave for France I can’t quite understand how it hasn’t provoked a general strike of its own: camembert is facing extinction.
The French Centre for Scientific Research has reported that the fungus required to make the cheese – Penicillium camemberti – are dangerously lacking in genetic diversity. This is because industrial cheesemaking has become dependent on one strain, rather than using the vigorous, multicoloured fungus of the past. Until the 1950s, camemberts had grey, green and orangey mould, apparently (I feel a bit queasy thinking about it), but the food industry wanted camembert white and velvety. If I understand correctly, the albino fungus it selected aren’t able to reproduce with other strains. Now, mutations mean the fungus is also losing the ability to reproduce asexually, putting the whole stinking enterprise at risk.
It’s not just camembert; roquefort faces an equivalent threat. A similar cheese, bleu de termignon has sufficiently closely related fungus that could help reinvigorate roquefort, but there’s no solution in sight for camembert, Normandy’s most precious export.
Why isn’t Paris burning? I don’t care, really – I hate camembert, always have, and will happily dance on its grave (in full PPE) – but the news landed hard with my Norman husband. Camembert is a religion there: his grandparents ate it for breakfast, dipped in their morning coffee; le claquos (its pet name) reigns over every family meal. Exiled from the real stuff here in the UK, he pokes supermarket camemberts gloomily, judging its maturity and odour and invariably finding it wanting. Faced with this news, he ran a full Kübler-Ross scale, from denial – “C’est fake news, camembert cannot die” – to depression: “It’s the end of the world.” He hasn’t reached acceptance, yet, but is profoundly questioning his life’s purpose: “Should my new mission be to save camembert?” he messaged me this week.
If my husband doesn’t, I think Emmanuel Macron, who continues to be about as popular as a Babybel on a Normandy cheeseboard, should. He could do worse than throwing €1bn and a pretentiously named institute at this problem; it’s a better – and surely more popular – move than courting far-right voters and defending Gérard Depardieu.
• This article was amended on 5 February 2024. An earlier version said that bacteria was needed to make camembert instead of fungus.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
