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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26880 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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As some may be aware, Europe has stricter non-trademark restrictions on what one is allow to call their product. In the EU a cheese may only be called a Feta or Parmesan if it is produced according to specified procedure in Greece or Italy, respectively and contains specfied ingredients. This geographic restriction even includes pastry such as Kalakukko. That a consumer might not taste the difference (or even find the johnny-come-lately superior) is irrelevant in the eyes of the law.

I've long considered this position to be unnecessarily strict. Something that is produced according to specified procedure and contains specfied ingredients, just not in the right location, is lumped together with food that is only tangentially related to the original PDO product. As a consumer, I want to be able to choose between Wisconsin Schmeta, Wisconsin Feta and PDO Feta. European rigidity results in less visibility for me, not more: either some country caves in and labels both products from Wisconsin "Schmeta", forcing people to look at the fine print to determine if it's practically feta or some soy-based spread, or they don't and all three products are labelled "Feta", again, forcing people to look at the fine print.

I as European welcome this. Different example is that for instance to call something butter in EU, it has to have between 82 and 90% butterfat and maximum of 16% water. So what happens in practice is that you have brand name of your local diary producer with Butter name on it and you know what you get. If you see something else, then it is some fake product. I consider this as very valuable for the sake of informing the customer about the quality and content of the product.

I want to offer a data point since your example caught my eye. My go-to butter, from a very respectable American dairy brand, is 81% butterfat. Butter isn’t what they’re most known for and I don’t think chefs seek it out, but I prefer it to the well-reviewed European brands I have tried. So it surprises me that the EU forbids it to be called butter.

On the other hand, America’s minimum alcohol content for liquor to be labeled with the obvious categories (whiskey, brandy, gin, etc.) is 80 proof (40% ABV) as opposed to the EU’s 75 proof (37.5% ABV). I don’t know what that says about us, but I am grateful for it.

But by the same token, if a dairy co-op in Ireland started producing and selling "Wisconsin cheese", I'm fairly sure the Wisconsin dairy industry would lodge an objection to them piggybacking off the recognised brand of "the Dairy State".

Idk, Texas Roadhouse seems to be doing just fine despite being from Louisville, Kentucky.

See also: Arizona Tea.

Texas: we really are the largest brand out of all the states.

Why would someone in Wisconsin put Maine, Greece or Canada on their cheese? If the name on a package is a place name, it is expected that the product is from there. Can an Indonesian factory start selling Swiss watches? Geneva watches with manufactured in Jakarta written in tiny print would be a lie.

Feta can only come from Feta. Dairy is different depending on the cows/sheep and the local practices and traditions. Feta isn't just a generic product but represents much more than that. Reducing local food product to nothing more than a generic product kills. For many smaller producers the protection they receive help them preserve their communities and smaller businesses.

Sparkling wine can be made in many places and I am sure there is excellent sparkling wine from more regions than Champagne. But instead of trying to freeload of the Champagne brand these producers should build their own brands and promote their type of wine.

Because feta, like cheddar, Gouda, havarti, provolone, and all other cheese varieties is a style of cheese which can be made anywhere. There’s nothing special about Greece that prevents other places from producing equivalent or even superior cheeses.

Because all of these names have become names for a style of product rather than just a place name. Cheddar is a style of cheese, not any old cheese from a particular village in Somerset. Same for all those other cheeses, and many of the wines, particularly including champagne. Europeans and other supporters of protection of origin (like India) like to pretend this isn't true but it is; Basmati is both the name of a place and the name of a variety of rice. The Europeans pretty much showed their hand on this when they banned not only "Champagne" but "méthode champenoise" on wine labels. It's not about expectations of customers, it's about protectionism.

Europeans and other supporters of protection of origin (like India) like to pretend this isn't true but it is

That's a pretty silly way to put it. People also use product names like 'googling stuff' for other search engines, yet the US still allows Google to trademark their name and then bans other companies from slapping Google on their search engines. That's not some sort of denial about how people use language. Legislators simply don't allow language use to dictate things like trademarks and in the EU, product names.

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