7 years, 1 month ago Jim Dewey
What do you call your cheese? Does the waiter ask if you want shredded hard cheese on your pasta? Or does he call it Parmesan?
If the European Union gets its way - the only cheese that could be called Parmesan, would be that cheese made in Parma, Italy. You would have to go to Muenster, Germany to produce Muenster Cheese. Feta could only come from Greece and Asiago from the Northeastern Italian Province of Vicenza. Presumably, as England has now opted out of the E U, we can still call Cheddar - Cheddar, no matter where it comes from.
Does this sound like a lot of Ground Meat Sausage? (Bologna is another Italian city)
The European Union is pushing for geographical indications on all food products - meaning those products made anywhere else - could not use the European names which have become the generic names of the products around the world. And it's not limited to food. Ceramics, textiles, apparel and other products could be affected as well.
The Consortium for Common Food Names (CCFN) is pushing hard against Geographical Indications and is urging the Trump Administration to aggressively oppose the EU Policies they say are "designed to help European farmers, food producers and others by forcing non-Europeans to re-brand familiar products with unfamiliar names."
According to a March 8th press release - while testifying before the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, Consortium Senior Director Shawna Morris noted that the United States has pushed hard against European Union geographical indications policies in the past and urged Trump's trade policy team to continue and intensify U.S. opposition to what amounts to a growing threat to U.S. manufacturing of foods with common names.
The EU's approach, Morris said, "is designed to steal commonly used names from those who built markets for those products and instead monopolize use of those terms in foreign and domestic markets." "What better way," she asked, "to erase competition in third country markets than to ban the use by competitors of commonly used names?"
And that is a critical point. As the world's economies grow, more people are going to be able to purchase these products. Which would you rather have, a generic White Cheese or Feta?
According to Morris, the EU has pursued its GI strategy largely through free trade agreements and through the World Intellectual Property Organization which is the intellectual property agency of the UN. Morris said, "In the process, normal procedures have been bypassed, making it difficult or impossible for others to object or influence decisions on GIs.
According to its press release, CCFN is requesting the US Trade Representative to hold trading partners accountable for the trade commitments and to preserve market access negotiated through previous trade agreements. In addition, it asked the Trade Representative to ensure that geographical indication protections do not violate rights such as company trademarks and that they do not prevent others from using widely used generic terms like feta and prosciutto. Finally, CCFN asked that USTR ensure that all those affected have an adequate opportunity to oppose proposed GIs to help preserve terms that could be threatened through certain GI applications.
Writing this has made me hungry, I believe I would like some round pasta bits with a red tomato based sauce and ground beef with ground hard cheese on top. And what do we call French Bread now?
