The Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture said it will apply to the EU to have Gruyere registered as a term of controlled provenance, after French attempts to have its own Gruyere-style cheese registered in the EU Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) register.

Dairy farmers in the French border region have been making similar cheese under the same name for some time and several agreements say Swiss and French producers may share the name.

Gruyere has protected status as an Appellation d'origine controlee (AOC) in both Switzerland and France, but France has only recently applied to make the name a term of controlled origin recently.