Quality Certification in the Face of Agricultural Relocalization: Between Peaceful Coexistence and Tension—Analysis Based on Cheese Production in Occitanie (France)

Abstract

This article aims to examine the status of products bearing an official label (‘SIQO’ in French) in food transition, in which the consumption of so-called ‘local’ products is now an unavoidable trend. Despite a situation a priori favorable, the SIQO products seem sometimes irrelevant when they are sold through short supply chains viewed as alternative food networks. The interviews with producers and consumers conducted in two French study areas (Lot and Ariège department) highlight this confrontation between ‘SIQO’ and ‘local’ products: in these two areas, two official labeled products (PDO and PGI cheeses Rocamadour an Tomme des Pyrénées) coexist with unlabeled local products. The results clearly show the existence of two opposite ‘ethics of production’, even if they tend to converge in certain aspects, in particular their territorial anchorage.