PARIS -- Disability groups in France are calling for a boycott of some Babybel cheese following accusations that a promotional summer toy insults the mentally ill.

Toy inkpads featuring the term "mentally ill holidays," were included as free gifts throughout July in bags of Mini Babybel, the round cheese with the iconic red wax coating.

The expression: "des vacances de malade mental," Babybel says, was intended as a fun wordplay on a common French term to mean "extraordinary."

'Discriminatory values'
But Babybel later admitted the slogan was not properly thought out.

"It was a short marketing campaign and as a result there was an error in validating the slogan. We admit it was very clumsy," Babybel Director General Etienne Lecomte said Thursday.

On Monday, France's leading association for the mentally handicapped, Unapei, called for a nationwide boycott of the cheese packs. It said the slogan sends "discriminatory values" to children.

The boycott initially covered all cheese products made by the Bel Group, the cheese conglomerate that also produces "The Laughing Cow" cheese.

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But Babybell apologized Wednesday, prompting disability groups to limit their boycott only to the packs containing the toys with the toy inkpads.

Babybel said it has stopped their production and is trying to take the remaining packets off shelves.

"Yes, Babybel has apologized, and it's sincere. But the damage might already have been done," said Unapei President Christel Prado.

"Kids go back to school soon, and they'll get asked about their holidays. Kids pick up things easily. Our fear is that they'll repeat: 'We had mentally ill holidays.'"

Insulted
Ludovic Gregoire, whose six-year-old son suffers from a form of autism, was one of many who wrote messages on Babybel's Facebook wall protesting the slogan.

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"It's just hurtful, when I read it. They call it humor. But if there was more education, negative campaigns like this wouldn't happen. In France, we are so behind other countries," Gregoire said. "'Malade mentale' is a common expression, but French people need to know how it actually feels. It's offensive."

Babybel management has agreed to talk about ways to fight discrimination in a meeting with disability groups scheduled for September.

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AFP PHOTO / Italian Police

Giuseppe Mandara, center, head of the biggest buffalo mozzarella manufacturing company in Italy, walks alongside policemen from the Anti-Mafia unit of the Italian police, after his arrest near Naples on Tuesday.

Police in Italy on Tuesday arrested the head of the country’s biggest buffalo mozzarella cheese maker and seized assets worth 100 million euros ($123 million) on suspicion of links to organized crime.

Giuseppe Mandara, who once called himself the "Armani of Mozzarella" in an interview, is thought to have been linked to a Naples mafia clan, according to a report by European news agency Agence France-Presse.

A report in Italy’s Il Denaro newspaper [link in Italian] said investigators believe Mandara received a bailout from the mafia when he was in financial trouble in the 1980s.

The Mandara Group is a major global exporter of buffalo mozzarella and is sold by large chains in Europe, Japan and the United States, AFP reported.

The investigation also includes charges of misleading consumers after the company was found to have mixed in cow milk with more expensive buffalo milk and labeled batches of ordinary provolone cheese as the more prestigious kind.

"We have seized the whole company," Paolo Di Napoli, an officer from the environmental protection arm of the Carabinieri police, told AFP.

Buffalo mozzarella sells in Italy for around 12 euros ($15) per kilo and can cost more than twice as much abroad, AFP said.

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Yoan Valat / Pool via Reuters

President Nicolas Sarkozy visits a cheese factory in Vallieres in the French Alps on Feb. 16.

It’s a matter of (spurious) debate if France’s president is a “surrender monkey,” but one thing seems clear: He is no longer cheese-eating.

Nicolas Sarkozy decided to stop savoring "le fromage" after meals, the AFP reported in an article on the kitchens at the presidential Elysee Palace. His chef said Sarkozy was trying to eat healthily, preferring "light, balanced meals and poultry to red meat," AFP added.

The term “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” was first used on "The Simpsons" and was popularized by National Review journalist Jonah Goldberg, who claimed he had made it “an accepted term in official diplomatic channels around the globe.”

Most French people would surely object to the idea of being “surrender monkeys,” but they would likely embrace the term “cheese-eating” wholeheartedly.

National pride
The variety and flavor of cheeses to be found across France is a matter of national and regional pride, a subject that can fire considerable passion.

As the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper noted, Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French forces during the Second World War and later president, once declared, “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?”

It remains to be seen if a non-cheese-eating leader is acceptable to the French electorate, who will decide whether Sarkozy remains in the Elysee in presidential elections in just three weeks’ time.

Presidential chef Bernard Vaussion, who has cooked for five French presidents, may have made an inadvertent intervention into the world of politics by declaring that cheese was “too much” for Sarkozy, as reported by the Telegraph’s Paris correspondent Henry Samuel.

Samuel also noted Sarkozy had caused a minor diplomatic incident in October last year when he remarked to another European leader that German Chancellor Angela Merkel “says she is on a diet and then helps herself to a second helping of cheese.”

An anti-cheese French president? Quelle horreur!

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