{"id":581,"date":"2014-03-15T11:07:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T11:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/parmesan-feta-black-forest-and-other-injustices-in-labelling.html"},"modified":"2014-03-15T11:07:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T11:07:00","slug":"parmesan-feta-black-forest-and-other-injustices-in-labelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/parmesan-feta-black-forest-and-other-injustices-in-labelling.html","title":{"rendered":"Parmesan, Feta, Black Forest and other injustices in labelling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So just catching up on the news over the weekend, including a report from multiple sources, but here from The Guardian<\/a>, that the EU, as a part of the latest round of trade talks with the U.S., want to ban American cheesemakers from using traditional place-name based labels for their cheese, or, more specifically, place the same place-of-origin restrictions as currently exist for such items as Champagne.\u00a0 Says The Guardian,<\/p>\n

The argument is that the American-made cheeses are shadows of the original European varieties and cut into sales and identity of the European cheeses. The Europeans say parmesan should only come from Parma, Italy, not those familiar green cylinders that American companies sell. Feta should only be from Greece, even though feta isn\u2019t a place. The EU argues it \u201cis so closely connected to Greece as to be identified as an inherently Greek product.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The proposed impact is wide-ranging:<\/p>\n

The EU is expected to make similar attempts to restrict marketing of US-made cheeses, possibly including parmesan, asiago, gorgonzola, feta, fontina, grana, gruy\u00e8re, muenster, neufchatel and romano.
And it may not be just cheese. Other products could include bologna, Black Forest ham, Greek yogurt, Valencia oranges and prosciutto, among other foods.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And\u00a0the article emphasizes the impact on U.S. made cheeses, which meant it was unclear to me whether\u00a0this meant that it is already the case that in\u00a0Europe, that the only item labelled Parmesan is imported from\u00a0Parma?\u00a0 Or are they planning on applying a double-standard,\u00a0so that within Europe,\u00a0Parmesan cheese refers to a production process and style in the U.S., to Parma-made cheese?\u00a0 The Guardian article certainly gave the latter impression, so I looked around a little bit.\u00a0 Online cheese retailers in the UK seemed to sell only Parmesan from Italy, only Gouda from Holland, etc., but it wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether that just meant that the sorts of cheeses you\u2019d go to the trouble of buying online were upscale enough as to always come from their place-of-origin, or whether, in fact, local preferences for particular types of cheeses remained strong enough that the English prefer their English cheeses for day-to-day cooking anyway.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So then I went to Wikipedia.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the article on \u201cGeographical indications and traditional specialities in the European Union<\/a>\u201d which gives some history on the ever-expanding reach of Protected Designation of Origin protections, and here\u2019s the article on Parmesan cheese<\/a>.\u00a0 Fun fact:\u00a0 when Kraft sells its Parmesan cheese in the EU, it calls it \u201cpamesello italiano.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>
Which brings me to the solution to this whole issue.\u00a0 The EU is being\u00a0silly and going way too far\u00a0with its protection of place-name based foodstuff names, but it\u2019s easy to accommodate them:\u00a0 we\u2019ll just have to rename our cheeses, using the same principles as Kraft followed with pamesello cheese; something similar-sounding with a suitable connotation.\u00a0 We do have a National Dairy Board so it should be possible to come up with universal names rather than a new set of trademarks.\u00a0 Grocers and cookbooks can offer a set of \u201ctranslations\u201d\/substitutions, and the labels themselves can say, \u201cformerly known as Parmesan.\u201d<\/span>
<\/span>
And, in the end, the Europeans would lose.\u00a0 Everyone knows that if a Parmesan cheese is labelled \u201cimported from Italy\u201d it\u2019s more expensive but can be assumed to be of better quality, and maybe even of significantly different flavor than its American counterpart,\u00a0as different as\u00a0powdered ginger vs. real minced ginger.\u00a0 But if the\u00a0generic name\u00a0is pamesello, will the Italians really be able to sell Parmesan and have that same connotation of, \u201csame product but vastly higher quality\u201d?\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t they be better off with the ability to label their product \u201cauthentic Parmesan\u201d?<\/span>
<\/span>
Xerox battled for years to get people to refer to photocopies as such rather than as \u201cXerox copies.\u201d\u00a0 Same with tissues and Kleenex.\u00a0 I think they\u2019ve won.\u00a0 But as a consequence, they\u2019ve also lost their pre-eminent place in the market.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So just catching up on the news over the weekend, including a report from multiple sources, but here from The Guardian, that the EU, as a part of the latest round of trade talks with the U.S., want to ban American cheesemakers from using traditional place-name based labels for their cheese, or, more specifically, place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nParmesan, Feta, Black Forest and other injustices in labelling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So just catching up on the news over the weekend, including a report from multiple sources, but here from The Guardian, that the EU, as a part of the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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