The slow food movement, which prizes quality over quantities, has managed to help save the Pie Noir cow from extinction, as reported in Deutsche Welle:

“The milk was not paid for its quality, but for its quantity and the Frisian [breed of cow] produced most milk, so it was most interesting,” [Jacques Cochy, a modern-day Pie Noir breeder] said.

By the 1970s, the Brittany cows’ numbers had plummeted from the half-a-million of its heyday to a mere 350 specimens, and the breed was on the verge of extinction.

The article points out the Pie Noir not only produces the most flavor in its milk but also is easier to manage — less susceptible to environmental risks (happy in rugged pasture and easy to breed with a high birth-survival rate).

“But people didn’t want to see this when they chose to eliminate it,” said another Pie Noir breeder, Vincent Thebaud, who owns 15 of the cows. “The problem with modern society is, when we decide to get rid of something, we only talk about its defects.”

Thebaud is one of the farmers who benefited from a special protection program set up in 1976, the first dedicated to a breed of cattle in France.

Despite being hardy and flavorful, industrialization and a focus on improving quantity left the Pie Noir vulnerable. Regulation by France helped stimulate preservation until their qualities became valued by the market again.

More detail can be found on Ouest-France about the birth of the slow food movement in Italy and the “little or no corn diet” of the Pie Noir: