The main dossiers studied reflect the collective mobilization of the sectors on these subjects.

Adapting to climate and societal challenges by integrating innovative provisions into specifications

The national committee has adopted a Directive, enabling, following the example of that previously adopted in the wine sector, the introduction of a dispositif d'évaluation des innovations (DEI) in specifications. This device is a new tool available to ODGs, alongside modifications to specifications and experiments that can be carried out outside specifications. It makes it possible to incorporate into specifications a share of innovations on themes that respond to one of the following contemporary challenges:

• Adaptation to climate change and mitigation of its effects,
• Preservation of biodiversity, biological resources and landscapes,
• Animal welfare,
• Transmission of know-how through the renewal of active farmers or processors,
• Product health quality, approached from a global perspective.

The Directive adopted by the national committee provides a framework for the scheme to ensure its robustness and effectiveness, while preserving the fundamentals of PDOs, particularly in terms of the link to origin. Rules for protocol, quantity limits and tripartite agreements (operator-ODG-INAO) are proposed. It will shortly be published on the INAO website.

With the same aim of accompanying changes to specifications, the national committee also encouraged ODGs to take up tools such as chart, enabling, for operators, to gradually accompany structural changes, and for ODGs, to define a medium- and long-term strategy in line with current societal expectations, against a backdrop of climate change that is destabilizing the sectors.

Recognition of a new appellation and validation of several specifications testifying to a renewed level of standards and guaranteeing human-scale agriculture

Following the national opposition procedure organized in the first quarter of the year, the national committee confirmed by secret ballot the recognition as AOC of the Mothais sur feuille appellation.

Mothais sur feuille is a soft cheese with a lactic character, made exclusively with whole, raw goat's milk in the shape of a flat cylinder and laid on a chestnut leaf. It is characterized in particular by milky and yeasty aromas.

Produced and matured in a geographical area made up of 238 communes spread over the south of the Deux-Sèvres department and communes in the bordering departments of Charente, Charente-Maritime, Vendée and Vienne (corresponding to southern Poitou), this mixed farming-livestock environment, historically favorable to the development of goat breeding, has steered practices towards a specific product.

This new step taken by the national committee will make it possible, once the specifications have been approved, to initiate the registration phase by the European Commission for this denomination, which should become the 108th agri-food PDO (and the 47th French cheese under PDO).

The national committee also approved the modification of the specifications for the Comté, Morbier and Mont d'Or or Vacherin du Haut-Doubs PDOs. The modification of these three specifications is part of a reflection carried out by these sectors aimed at preserving agriculture on a human scale, while taking into account territorial issues. Through these modifications, the ODGs wish to preserve the model that has made these sectors so successful, maintain and preserve the know-how of operators, and meet consumer expectations. This vote pays tribute to the hard work undertaken over several years by the INAO's investigation commissions and departments, in conjunction with the ODGs, to bring these far-reaching changes to fruition. It now paves the way, for each specification, for a two-month period of national opposition procedure (PNO), which will shortly be opened via a notice published in the Journal Officiel de la république française.