One of the most-beloved cheeses is suddenly going extinct

 The INSIDER Summary:

• The much-beloved creamy French cheese is teetering on the edge of extinction.
• Authentic Camembert cheese can only be made the old-school way: with raw, unpasteurized milk.
• Only a few small producers use this process, and increasing crackdowns on raw milk products could make Camembert disappear altogether.

Fancy cheese boards face an unpopular downgrade.

Camembert — the creamy French cheese that looks like brie but smells like ripe feet — is in danger of becoming extinct thanks to strict government regulations and a crackdown on raw milk products.

To be labeled authentic Camembert cheese, cheesemakers must prove that their cheese was made with 38% milk fat from cows in the Normandy region using unpasteurized, raw milk. The cows have to be raised on a very specific diet, and the milk needs to be hand-ladled in four separate layers.

Large-scale commercial cheesemakers wanted to dial back on these finicky restrictions, but a 2008 court case sided with smaller producers during the “Camembert Wars” and ruled that they could not use pasteurized milk (which is a much cheaper and safer process). Authentic Camembert makers, as you can imagine, are in very short supply. Just over 1% of Camembert is the real deal, and that number is ever-shrinking, thanks to farm buyouts, according to Bloomberg. The fake stuff is labeled Camembert Fabrique en Normandie, as opposed to getting the PDO Camembert de Normandie stamp of approval.

Raw milk cheeses may be popular with enthusiasts, but in the United States they’re a big no-no. The FDA has banned cheese products that are aged for less than 60 days (aka “raw”) from entering the country. Why? The pasteurization process kills off harmful bacteria that can spread deadly foodborne illnesses like listeria.

Your best bet to capture the unique funk of real Camembert is to head to the source.

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