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FOOD AND DRINK

Overheated French cows means falling cheese production in Alps

France's record heat and drought have not spared the majestic pastures under the snow-capped Alps, where cows are struggling to find enough grass to produce milk for reblochon and other prized cheeses.

Overheated French cows means falling cheese production in Alps
A cheese producer walks among his herd of cows in an alpine pasture above La Clusaz on August 22,2022. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD / AFP)

“Everything’s yellow and parched, so we’ll have to bring them down from the pastures a month early,” said Theo Bargetzy, 28, as cowbells rang out in a field some 1,600 metres above sea level.

Crowds of tourists in search of cooler climes have flocked to the Alps this summer where buying local raw-milk reblochon and other hand-made cheeses directly from local producers is a cherished ritual.

But this year, some heading to Bargetzy’s Lorettes farm perched above La Clusaz are coming away empty-handed – cows are not getting their usual fill of fresh grass, and their milk is less rich as a result.

July was the driest month on record for France overall since 1961, and heat waves pushed temperatures near La Clusaz above 30C on several days, unheard-of on the steep slopes.

“We’re losing one reblochon per cow per day, so in a week that’s 300 fewer cheeses,” Bargetzy says later, while molding fresh curds into discs that will be carefully aged on wooden planks in a cellar until the distinctive orange-gold rind forms.

Cheese in the cellars of an alpine farm above La Clusaz. (Photo by JEFF PACHOUD / AFP)

It takes four litres of milk to make each cheese that weighs some 450 grammes – within the guidelines set by the National Institute of Origin and Quality (INAO), the guardian of France’s strict food and wine appellations.

“The worst thing is that this is when we have lots of tourists wanting to buy, and we don’t have enough for everyone — we run out, and can’t sell to all the people coming to visit,” he said.

Dozens of farmers have already dipped into their winter feed stocks, but overall dairy production in the region is down 15 percent from last year’s levels, according to the AFTAlp cheese producers’ association.

Earlier in the summer production of the AOP cheese Salars – a speciality of the Cantal area of central France – was halted because the drought meant that the cows could not be entirely grass-fed, as the AOP recipe specifies.

“The situation is difficult — we’ve had droughts in the past but this is going on everywhere in France, Italy and elsewhere in Europe,” said the association’s president Jean-Luc Duclos.

Duclos and his family manage a farm with more than 200 cows for making emmental as well as meat near Frangy, with an app-controlled milking system that would astonish his grandfather, who had “four cows and four hectares to feed 11 children”.

He worries that rising costs of feed, gas and electricity since the outbreak of the Ukraine war will create a vicious circle of price speculation and hoarding that could hurt farmers for months to come.

“We’ve already had to raise the prices of our Savoy products… but I think we’ll have to raise them again, by around five to eight percent, to cover the impact of this drought,” he said.

What for generations was subsistence farming has become a thriving Alps industry, though most operations are still family affairs that rely on both local and national networks to distribute their stocks.

Felix Gallet, 46, plays a key role as technical director of the reblochon cooperative in nearby Thones, ensuring the strict hygiene protocols required to sell raw-milk cheeses many countries do not allow because of bacterial risks.

“Our output is down around four or five percent. It’s not a complete catastrophe because some farms are higher up, and temperatures were a little lower than in the valleys,” Gallet said.

“But it’s true that it’s going to have an impact on our volumes, we’re hoping to recover this winter but it’s going to be hard to make up for what we’ve already lost,” he said.

Gallet also warned that in response, producers can increase prices only so much.

“It’s hard to go much higher, even for high-quality cheese. You have to bear in mind what consumers can pay,” he said.

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ENVIRONMENT

Mystery sonic boom rattles French Mediterranean island of Corsica

An unidentified sonic boom heard on the French island of Corsica and in Italy may have been a meteorite, experts have said.

Mystery sonic boom rattles French Mediterranean island of Corsica

Media in Corsica reported that the event occurred at around 4.30pm on Thursday.

It was also felt on the Italian island of Elba. The town of Campo nell’Elba said on its Facebook page that a nearby tracking station had, “captured a seismic, acoustic event felt by everyone” at that time. 

Tuscany regional government president Eugenio Giani initially said it was an earthquake, then backtracked after Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) ruled one out.

The Italian Air Force told Giani it had nothing to do with the sonic boom.

“The type of event which caused the tremor, felt by many as an earthquake over the entire coast of Tuscany and in some inland areas, is currently unconfirmed,” Giani wrote on social media.

The region’s Geophysics Institute and the University of Florence said in a joint statement that whatever caused the boom was travelling at 400 miles per second.

“A meteorite entering the atmosphere seems the most likely and in line with the data registered”.

The Corriere della Sera daily quoted an unnamed person from Italy’s civil protection agency saying, “the impact would have been registered by seismographs. The most likely hypothesis is still an aeroplane”.

It is not the first time mysterious sonic booms have been registered on Elba, the Corriere della Sera said. Similar events in 2012, 2016 and 2023 have yet to be explained, it said.

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