Beijing (September 9, 2017): China has imposed ban on the import of traditional European Cheeses that have been imported and consumed in China for decades.
Suppliers in the country are no longer able to import a range of famous French cheeses such as brie, camembert, and roquefort, said the companies involved in the industry.
“The entire Chinese market for soft cheeses is now closed,” said William Fingleton, a spokesman for the Delegation of the European Union to China.
“This effectively means that China is banning famous and traditional European cheeses that have been safely imported and consumed in China for decades. There is no good reason for the ban, because China considers the same cheese safe if produced in China,” he said.
“Right now, we can only sell hard cheese like cheddar, comte and manchego,” said Vincent Marion, CEO of Shanghai-based Cheese Republic. His business, which sells imported cheeses online, warned customers of the ban in a message shared Thursday on Chinese messaging platform WeChat.
A spokeswoman for Shanghai Fuzhen Commerce, a foreign food importer, said it received notice of the ban from government regulators in June.
But Marion said several of Cheese Republic’s suppliers only started flagging the problem two weeks ago, warning him that Chinese officials were preventing soft cheese from entering the country.
“So we can sell only the stock which was imported before” the ban took effect, he said. Soft cheeses make up roughly half of his company’s product range.
“The European cheese industry is extremely concerned by this ban,” said the EU’s Fingleton. “We are concerned that potentially many other types of cheeses may be affected in the future in the same way.”
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