(MENAFN- Swissinfo)
Swiss cheeses have lost a domestic market share of 12% since 2007. © Keystone / Urs Flueeler
The liberalisation of the dairy sector starting in the 1990s is to blame for this development, says the president of Swissmilk, Boris Beuret.
This content was published on July 8, 2023 July 8, 2023 Le Temps/RTS/gw The Swiss may be eating more cheese than ever – around 22.9kg per person in 2022 – but dairy farms in the country are disappearing twice as fast as other agricultural producers, Beuret says in an interview published on saturdayexternal link by the newspaper Le Temps.
“For the first time, this year we will be importing more cheese than we export [in tonnes],” he says.“This is the result of a liberalisation process that began at the end of the 1990s and is more far-reaching than for cereals or meat.”
+ us court rules gruyère cheese isn't just swiss
Since 2007, when the cheese market was liberalised, Swiss cheeses have lost a domestic market share of 12%. According to Beuret, the current system has reached its limits.
“If we want to meet the population's food needs effectively, we need to continue producing milk throughout the country,” says Beuret.“Otherwise, we'll end up importing it, which would be an economic, social and ecological absurdity.”
+ dairy substitutes filling up swiss shelves
Prices in supermarkets agreed through a complex system of compromise do not cover the growing production costs for milk producers, Le Temps reveals. An investigation a year ago by the paper in collaboration with Heidi.news showed that the country's biggest retailers, Migros and Coop, were making very high margins on a range of dairy products.
“I'm convinced that consumers are ready to understand that we need to be properly remunerated if we are to continue in this direction [of sustainable production],” says Beuret.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: swi swissinfo.ch certified by the journalism trust initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at ... .
Read more