(Just a few days ago the U.S. dropped its threatened 300 percent tariff on French Roquefort cheese.)Whew! There is one cheese that I love above all others and that is blue cheese. Granted there are some fine blue cheeses made here in the U.S. (Great Blue Hill, Point Reyes Original Blue, and Bayley Hazen Blue), however there is nothing like French Roquefort.
So a few days ago it was announced that the European Commission and the U.S. had reached a provisional agreement in a long dispute over the European Union's ban on hormone-treated beef. The deal ends for now the threat of retaliatory duties from the U.S. on EU products ranging from Roquefort cheese from France to Spanish hams and Italian mineral water.
According to Murray's Cheese in New York, the U.S. was going to slap Roquefort with a 300% import tariff which was up from the 100% that was imposed in 1999. After calculating all the costs from its production, exchange rate, shipping, tariffs, etc., it would have put the cheese at around to about $31 a pound prior to any retail mark-up.
So although we don't have any fabulous cheese shops here like in Boston, New York or San Francisco, I'll still be able to afford some Roquefort cheese from time to time.
1 comments:
blue cheese is one of the VERY FEW foods my palate does not appreciate --- I can smell it in my olfactory mind as you write about it --- pheeeew ---
for your sake, I am glad the heavy tarrif has not materialized
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