Environment. Ban the county because of pollution? We explain the controversy.

In Franche-Comté, the pollution, or rather the pollutions, of the Loue River have been making headlines in the regional press, including L'Est Républicain , for several years. This problem is rooted, among other things, in changes in agriculture and its intensification, particularly due to the production of Comté cheese.

The case came back into the spotlight on April 24, during an interview on France Inter with Pierre Rigaux, a French activist for ecology, animal rights, and the abolition of hunting. " If Comté cheese is bad ecologically, if it's bad for animals, even terrible for animals (...), then we must stop eating it," he stated.

A statement that quickly triggered a flurry of reactions from county defenders, carried by the hashtag #TouchePasAuComté on social networks.

The Jura prefecture itself issued a tweet ending with a scathing "Let's stay serious!"

A tweet to which Pierre Rigaux responded on Sunday: "The people of Jura have the right and a vital need to have preserved waterways."

This battle over the cheese industry is fueling debates even on television sets.

"Whenever environmentalists see a small problem, the principle is a total ban," reacted columnist Maxime Lledo on LCI.

"There are companies in the Jura dairy industry that have been fined for polluting rivers. There's a river called the Loue that is now completely devastated," emphasized lawyer and public speaking specialist Bertrand Périer. He added: "The question is not at all whether we should eat Comté cheese, the question is how we should produce it."