Cheese factory starts blog to preserve its origins

This means that any manufacturers outside of Wensleydale, where the cheese has been produced since 1150, can not produce a cheese and call it Real Yorkshire Wensleydale.

The website will include members of Wensleydale's 190 staff giving regular updates on developments at the creamery, from which cheeses have gone into production to progress on the PDO submission.

Ian Green, director of media at Green, said: "We are increasingly using new social media platforms such as the web to ensure that our clients get best the possible exposure to a wide range of audiences. The wonderful thing about the blog is that we can instant feedback."

Visitors will be able to post their own comments and there will also be an online petition for visitors to sign in support of the campaign.

David Hartley, the dairy's managing director, said: "The Wensleydale blog provides us with an opportunity to communicate directly with all our key audiences, whether they be cheese enthusiasts or Yorkshire folk keen to support the creamery."

Wensleydale has been made famous in recent years by being the selection of choice by cheese-enthusiast Wallace, from Aardman Animations' hit 'Wallace and Gromit' movies.

Hartley said: "The creamery is run on very traditional lines but we are not afraid of embracing innovation in our products and also new technologies like the web and blogging."

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