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What's the Future of Raw Milk in France?
The country that gives us the best cuisine in the World has some of the worst milk in Europe!
Two generations of French men and women have been brought up on a surfeit of UHT milk and it's beginning to show! Unlike the UK, fresh pasteurised milk has always been difficult to find so most of the French have no idea what proper milk tastes like and are not interested in it.
As in England and Wales, there are a few hundred farms dotted around remote areas of the country where consumers can purchase the raw product. With slightly laxer regulations than ours, milk is sold in bottles or cartons, but you can also bring your own to fill up, and the milk is usually slightly cheaper when bought this way.
So, what's the problem? Surely French raw milk sales will pick up as they have done here. The problem is that most young people are not the slightest bit interested in fresh milk. They'll talk for hours about how the boeuf bourgignon should be cooked and which grapes on which square foot make the best local vin, but real milk is foreign to their taste buds.
It would be criminal if raw milk disappeared in the capital of haute cuisine, not because of government dictat, but because nobody wanted it any more.
But all is not lost! An experiment that is a cross between Heath Robinson and 1960s millk bar hi-tech is going great guns and proving that the Real Thing is sought after in the cities. Large vending machines, the size of one of our passport photo booths in the UK, are popping up around supermarkets and shopping centres all over France. For a Euro you can insert you own container and receive a full litre of beautiful, unpasteurised milk. For 3 Euros you can have it in a sealed, glass bottle. For 20 centimes you can pop you mug under the spout and fill up. With the sound of a cowmooing heartedly in the background, this may be the way forward!
There's also hope in the new generation of microfiltered milks sold in the supermarkets. These are not the real McCoy and are produced along the lines of the Isigny camembert cheeses, but the milk is not pasteurised or UHT and it tastes remarkably like the raw product. If this weans the French public off their love affair with UHT this can only be a good thing and a step in the right direction to a renaissance of real milk appreciation.
If you're in the Cote d'Or in Burgundy, try Ferme du Colombier just outside Arnay le Duc 35 km west of Beaune; http://www.fermeducolombier.free.fr
Two generations of French men and women have been brought up on a surfeit of UHT milk and it's beginning to show! Unlike the UK, fresh pasteurised milk has always been difficult to find so most of the French have no idea what proper milk tastes like and are not interested in it.
As in England and Wales, there are a few hundred farms dotted around remote areas of the country where consumers can purchase the raw product. With slightly laxer regulations than ours, milk is sold in bottles or cartons, but you can also bring your own to fill up, and the milk is usually slightly cheaper when bought this way.
So, what's the problem? Surely French raw milk sales will pick up as they have done here. The problem is that most young people are not the slightest bit interested in fresh milk. They'll talk for hours about how the boeuf bourgignon should be cooked and which grapes on which square foot make the best local vin, but real milk is foreign to their taste buds.
It would be criminal if raw milk disappeared in the capital of haute cuisine, not because of government dictat, but because nobody wanted it any more.
But all is not lost! An experiment that is a cross between Heath Robinson and 1960s millk bar hi-tech is going great guns and proving that the Real Thing is sought after in the cities. Large vending machines, the size of one of our passport photo booths in the UK, are popping up around supermarkets and shopping centres all over France. For a Euro you can insert you own container and receive a full litre of beautiful, unpasteurised milk. For 3 Euros you can have it in a sealed, glass bottle. For 20 centimes you can pop you mug under the spout and fill up. With the sound of a cowmooing heartedly in the background, this may be the way forward!
There's also hope in the new generation of microfiltered milks sold in the supermarkets. These are not the real McCoy and are produced along the lines of the Isigny camembert cheeses, but the milk is not pasteurised or UHT and it tastes remarkably like the raw product. If this weans the French public off their love affair with UHT this can only be a good thing and a step in the right direction to a renaissance of real milk appreciation.
If you're in the Cote d'Or in Burgundy, try Ferme du Colombier just outside Arnay le Duc 35 km west of Beaune; http://www.fermeducolombier.free.fr
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