More and more products are gaining Protected Designation of Origin status, feta cheese being the latest to join the list. But why should products be granted PDO status, and how will the changes affect foreign producers? Bernice Hurst investigates.
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Ask a West Country Farmhouse Cheddar cheesemaker what makes his cheese unique and he’ll cite the cows and milk from which it is made and the traditional hand cheddaring techniques passed down from generation to generation. While large creameries worldwide may be producing their versions of “cheddar” cheese, only those who make it on their own farms in Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall are entitled to use the PDO logo.
And if the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association’s application for PGI is accepted, only manufacturers located within an area that would have been roughly one day’s ride by horse from Melton Market (25 miles) will be considered for accreditation. In this case, size doesn’t matter. Founding members of the Association, formed for the specific purpose of protecting the name and quality of their product, range from a local butcher producing a few hundred pies each month to a large national company producing millions.
A Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or Protected Geographic Indication (PGI) can, by European Union (EU) law, be assigned only to food or drink unique to and/or historically associated with a region. Only those products made in the region where it originated may use the name.
Why bother with PDO?
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By GlobalDataIn the UK, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) endorses the designations as a way of maintaining the specific identity of products, protecting them against imitation and creating effective marketing strategies.
Producers are encouraged to use the logo on packaging, and a campaign to increase consumer awareness was launched to assure the public that provenance can be proved and that the food is truly authentic. One of the campaign’s objectives is to benefit the people and areas where the products originate.
For Whitstable Oysters, which became a registered PGI in January 1997, that is certainly the case. Their case study for DEFRA claims that the area as a whole has benefited from increased tourism. Press coverage has resulted in Whitstable becoming “THE place to live” as well as getting enquiries from at least one film crew per week. This, in turn, has led to more small businesses, hotels and restaurants opening in the area that, in turn, have attracted even more visitors.
What’s in a name?
For products prohibited from using names that infringe on regional identities declared sacred by the EU, there can be a difficulty getting their message across. How do you tell the world that your cheese, for example, is as near as you can make it to a parmigiano reggiano without calling it something that comes close to Parmesan (the accepted English translation of the Italian designation)?
“Italian style cheese” really doesn’t do it; there are too many of those to instantly tell the consumer which one refers to seasoned Italian cheeses – the new way to describe what used to be the Parmesan family.
According to Linda Lane of Headway Public Relations, her clients at MH Foods have decided not to bother trying. Their recently launched “vegetarian non-dairy parmesan style seasoning” is simply called Parmazano. The EU can take them on or not, as they will. Lane reckons that as it isn’t one of the manufacturer’s biggest products, they decided to take a chance with the name and hope for the best. Tubs of the grated seasoning are now available in the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s, or will be until someone decides to make an official complaint.
Cheese is a particularly good example of producer protectionism. France has 41 cheese names protected by PDOs, Italy has 30, while the UK has 11.
How to communicate to consumers similarity with an exclusive product?
One of the other well known examples, however, is that of Prosciutto di Parma (Parma ham). Because the flavour of the meat is attributed directly to the breed and the grass on which it is fed, as well as the production method, no one outside a limited area in Italy is allowed to use the name.
George Streatfeild of Denhay Farms in England, however, has his own distinctive ham and has applied for registration as a PGI for Denhay Air Dried Ham. While technically quite different to that produced in Parma, consumers would have to examine and taste carefully to understand this. The name may also be more explanatory, but perceptions currently based on familiarity with Parma ham will need significant modification to ensure widespread acceptance of Denhay in its own right.
Decisions on accreditation are not made either easily or quickly. Valaisan rye bread from Switzerland was granted PDO status in October 2002, having originally applied in August 1997. Produced in the Swiss canton Valais, the bread is made exclusively of rye grown, milled and baked in the area.
Nor are the rules implemented quickly. Feta cheese from certain parts of Greece also gained PDO designation in October 2002 but producers in France, Denmark, Germany and the UK have five years to either re-name their products or stop making it. Denmark, for one, has objected on the grounds that feta is a generic name. A ruling from the European Court of Justice is not expected for two to three years. Furthermore, feta was previously granted protected status by the EC in 1996 but lost it in a legal challenge, also from Denmark, on a technicality.
Brussels versus the world
While those who apply for protected status and gain it are happy, others around the world are less so. Dairy manufacturers outside of the EU, such as New Zealand’s Fonterra, argue that names such as feta, cheddar, parmesan and emmental are established generic product terms, no longer referring exclusively to the cheeses produced in specific geographic areas. Fonterra’s chief, Craig Norgate, told the International Dairy Federation (IDF) at a September 2002 conference in Paris that the geographical protection of cheese names was “spiralling into absurdity”.
In a letter to the Financial Times (October 2002), David Spencer, Australian Ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), added his objections, saying: “Others may have no objection if Europe wants to burden its taxpayers, consumers, governments and producers with costly regulatory practices on food labels. But Brussels should not be surprised if its trading partners object to having the same centralised system foisted on them via an expansion of the trade-related intellectual property rights (Trips) agreement in the World Trade Organisation. We believe that decisions on what is and what is not a generic term should be a matter for national authorities, not a bureaucratically cumbersome and expensive international dispute settlement system, which is being advocated by the European Union in the WTO.”
Yet again, where food is concerned, this may be a case of Brussels against the world.
