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The General Confederation of Roquefort, an orga­ni­za­tion of the French cheese pro­duc­ers with a Protected of Designation of Origin (PDO), has con­demned Nutri-Score for pun­ish­ing tra­di­tional spe­cial­ties.

According to the con­sor­tium, the front-of-pack label­ing sys­tem’s rat­ing rep­re­sents a ​“puni­tive approach,” and the famous cheese should be exempt from using the logo.

The con­fed­er­a­tion said that it had taken its stand, along with some elected politi­cians and local offi­cials, because the French gov­ern­ment plans to make Nutri-Score manda­tory for food pro­duc­ers.

“This is para­dox­i­cal,” Sébastien Vignette, sec­re­tary-gen­eral of the con­fed­er­a­tion, told French news­pa­per LeFigaro. ​“Ultra-processed indus­trial food prod­ucts which con­tain preser­v­a­tives obtain an A or a B [on the Nutri-Score scale] while very nat­ural local prod­ucts are stig­ma­tized.”

Nutri-Score rat­ings clas­sify food on a scale bro­ken down into five cor­re­spond­ing col­ors and let­ters, from ​“Green A,” con­sid­ered the health­i­est option, down to the ​“Red E.”

These rat­ings are based on basic nutri­ent con­tent, such as sodium, unsat­u­rated fats and calo­ries, in a 100-gram or 100-mil­lime­ter por­tion. All cheeses are rated D or E since they are high in both sodium and sat­u­rated fats.

Due to the types of ingre­di­ents taken into account by Nutri-Score, some bev­er­ages, includ­ing arti­fi­cially-sweet­ened soft drinks, receive a ​“Green A” or ​“Light Green B.”

However, Serge Hercberg, the founder of the food label­ing sys­tem, told Olive Oil Times in a July 2020 inter­view that the rat­ings are meant to com­pare food prod­ucts in the same cat­e­gory. For exam­ple, the rat­ings for diet soft drinks do not mean the prod­uct is healthy, sim­ply that it is health­ier than reg­u­lar soft drinks.

“This is an injus­tice. We are the heirs of tra­di­tional recipes with spec­i­fi­ca­tions which guar­an­tee the qual­ity of our prod­ucts,” Vignette said, fur­ther describ­ing Nutri-Score as a ​“sim­plis­tic logo” in a time ​“when com­plex­ity and nuance rarely have their place.”

Stéphane Mazars, a mem­ber of the French National Assembly in Aveyron, where Roquefort is tra­di­tion­ally pro­duced, added that ​“if I do not have pre­vi­ous knowl­edge, between A and E, I will always go toward the A.”

“For Roquefort, this does not make any sense,” he added. ​“Labels are already an act of respon­si­bil­ity toward the con­sumer… The desire for trans­parency for the con­sumer must be ratio­nal and have com­mon sense.”

Vignette empha­sized that the con­fed­er­a­tion is not ​“against Nutri-Score if it is deployed to clas­sify processed food, about which the cit­i­zens need to be informed. What we are fight­ing is its appli­ca­tion to PDOs spe­cial­ties.”

The confederation’s state­ment fol­lows a sim­i­lar one made by the two most promi­nent cheese Italian PDO cheese con­sor­tia, Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano. In a joint ini­tia­tive, the two orga­ni­za­tions crit­i­cized Nutri-Score, say­ing that it does not con­sider the nutri­tional pro­file of high-qual­ity cheese.

However, the General Confederation of Roquefort’s ini­tia­tive is being rebuked by Nutri-Score advo­cates, includ­ing the European Consumer Organization (BEUC), an early sup­porter of the French-born food logo.

“Roquefort is a prod­uct high in fat, salt and calo­ries, so this rank­ing is no sur­prise for any­one who has ever checked the nutri­tional table at the back of the pack,” Camille Perrin, BEUC’s senior food pol­icy offer, told Food Navigator.

She added that Nutri-Score is not sim­plis­tic; it is sim­ple, in the sense that ​“it is about trans­lat­ing the nutri­tional table avail­able in the back of the pack, to make it more under­stand­able and usable by con­sumers.”

According to the French con­sumer asso­ci­a­tion CLCV, ​“Roquefort is good, but it is also fatty and salty, and the con­sumer must be informed that it is rated D or E.”

The CLCV added that ​“Nutri-Score allows con­sumers to make an informed choice by com­par­ing at a glance the nutri­tional qual­ity of prod­ucts from the same fam­ily. Why not allow it for cheese?”

According to data from Statista, a mar­ket research firm, approx­i­mately 20,000 tons of Roquefort are pro­duced in France each year. Seven thou­sand tons of those are cer­ti­fied with PDO sta­tus, of which 25 per­cent are exported abroad.

Nutri-Score remains the front run­ner to be selected as the European Union’s stan­dard­ized food label­ing sys­tem. The European Commission intends to choose a front-of-pack label­ing plat­form by the end of next year.

• Food Navigator
• LeFigaro