Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Mr President. But I really should be saying thank you to Mr Will Studd, the 'big cheese', for drumming up excitement on 12 July with a tweet: 'Roquefort to be banned in Australia'. Au contraire. It is my pleasure to advise that the rumour is not true. My department is not looking to ban imports of Roquefort, the French king of blue vein cheese. The department is merely carrying out a routine review of the certification arrangements between the Australian and French authorities that allow the import of the raw sheep milk cheese. This is the second review undertaken since 2008, when we began to import the cheese. It is the same review process for all foreign government certification agreements and is consistent with Codex guidelines and processes undertaken by other countries. We imported—and I found this unbelievable—30 tonnes of Roquefort in 2018. I'm very confident the trade will continue.