Britain Reopens French Raw Milk Cheese Imports After 16 Months While Italy And Spain Stay Shut

If I bought cheese for a British shop this week, I would not start with price. I would start with one column in a government list. That column reopened French raw milk cheese on 26 October, 16 months after it closed.

What changed in the list on 26 October

Britain controls dairy imports through a third country list. France sat on that list with a footnote against it. The footnote suspended raw cattle milk and raw dairy from 1 July 2025. Defra reviewed the steps France had taken and cleared the entry. France is now authorised on the list with no footnote at all. A separate notice revoked the matching measures on hides, skins and other by-products. That revocation applies in England, Scotland and Wales from 27 October. Defra published the change as a note to official vets on 28 October. The mechanism here is worth holding on to. The ban never sat in cheese law. It sat in an import list, so one line edit closed the lane and one line edit opened it. Nothing about the cheese itself had to change in either direction.

Why the rule bit soft cheese and left hard cheese alone

The suspension covered cattle milk only. Sheep and goat cheese travelled as normal throughout. Roquefort, Ossau-Iraty and Pecorino Sardo were never in scope. The virus can survive in raw milk and is killed by heating it. So the rule cuts at the heat step in the dairy. That step is also where the style of a cheese is decided. A young raw cow cheese cannot be heated and stay the same cheese. Brie de Meaux, Camembert de Normandie and Reblochon stopped arriving. Cooked and pressed types could still travel with a signed line on the health form. The reason the maker could not simply switch is a legal one. A protected name carries a written method, and some of those methods require raw milk. Heat the milk and the cheese loses the name it sells under. The trade also reported an exemption for cheese whose ageing began before 23 May 2025. That exemption ran itself down as the aged stock sold through.

Italy and Spain are still shut out

France is the exception rather than the pattern. Italy was suspended on 25 June 2025, days after its first case. Spain followed on 7 October 2025, and both entries still carry the footnote today. Each country is listed on its own and reviewed on its own. That matters because there is no regional reopening to wait for. Heated Italian cheese still arrives with the right paperwork. Raw Italian cow cheese does not. A buyer who built a counter around one Italian raw milk cheese has no route to it through France. Sheep and goat milk is not a safe harbour everywhere either. Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia are all suspended for sheep and goat raw milk, under a different animal disease. So the open and closed lanes now form a patchwork across Europe rather than a border.

The lane stayed shut long after the disease stopped

France recorded 117 outbreaks in all. A French minister reported no active cases on 12 January 2026. The list changed on 26 October, more than nine months after that. That happens because a list reopens when a reviewing office finishes its work. It does not reopen when the last case clears. Two different instruments had to move as well. One was the third country listing, held by the import office. The other was the set of special measures signed for each nation. Cattle vaccination in the French south west reached 96.5% by late February. Spain then found new cases into March, which kept a live risk next door. So the French file sat behind a Spanish problem for part of the year.

The scale behind all of this is large. Britain brought in 119,564 tonnes of cheese and curd in the final quarter of 2025. About 99% of that came from the European Union. Imports are not a fringe part of the British cheese shelf. They are most of its variety.

The part of the shelf this closed is the part that grows

Shop data shows where the demand sits. In the twelve weeks to 5 September, speciality and continental cheese volume rose 4.6%. Other cow cheese rose 10.6% while cheddar fell 1.3%. Imports supply most of that growing end. British cheese imports rose 7,800 tonnes in the first half of this year. Cheese and curd is also Britain's largest dairy import by value, at GBP 1,090m. Zenith's own work puts fresh cheese at over a third of world cheese demand. It grows about 2.4% a year to 2030. The reason these two lines meet is simple. Fresh and soft types sell on short life and counter display. They are the first types a raw milk rule removes. Cheddar and other long keepers sail through untouched. So the rule took out the growth and left the flat part alone.

The Zenith read on what reopens next

We think Italian raw cow milk cheese is the next entry to be cleared, inside the first half of 2027. Italy's last reported case was in November 2025, and Sardinia left its restriction zones in February. Spain is the one to leave out of a sourcing plan for now. Its cases ran latest, and that is what a reviewing office reads first. The figure we watch is the date of Spain's last reported case. That matters because every fresh case restarts the clock the French file has just run. We would not model a Spanish raw milk listing back on a British shelf before 2028. There is a second thing we would do today. We would ask which of our own listings could be closed the same way. Our opening claim settles here. A desk that reads price before it reads the list will buy a cheese it cannot ship.

One list entry rarely moves a national cheese market on its own. What matters is how many of them are open at the same time. That wider flow is what we track in the Global Cheese Database 2026. It carries production, imports, exports and demand in tonnes. The cover is 39 cheese types across 48 markets. Actuals run to 2025 and forecasts reach 2030.