Labels held hostage - Véronique Richez-Lerouge

Wines, cheeses, cured meats... Our official labels—AOP, IGP, Label Rouge, and even Organic Agriculture—maintain dangerous liaisons with global billionaires who masquerade as artisans. Far from being concerned, France, the cradle of appellations of origin, hands over the keys to its terroir to agribusiness. Only small producers remain to keep the business afloat, forced to fight on unequal terms to preserve our local traditions and elevate the meaning of "Quality" every day, against agribusiness giants. These giants buy up our gastronomic heritage with hefty checks, illustrating the weakness of our institutional mechanisms in the face of lobbying power in France and Brussels. Who is to blame? The buyers, the sellers, or the State? It's a looming catastrophe in the medium term: the disappearance of farms, the disfigurement of landscapes and terroirs, the impoverishment of biodiversity, and the standardization of tastes. Reclaiming these traditions is possible, but it requires political courage and a clear roadmap. In this book, the author expands her investigation to reveal what lies behind this usurpation of traditions and explores several avenues for addressing the problem.