Parmesan didn't used to be protected over here either - only Parmigiano-Reggiano was. The trouble is that most people didn't actually care about whether the par

Parmesan didn't used to be protected over here either - only Parmigiano-Reggiano was. The trouble is that most people didn't actually care about whether the parmesan they tossed in their cooking was the expensive, geographically-controlled stuff or some cheaper local imitation. So cheese producers went on a legal battle to leverage their control over the Parmigiano-Reggiano name into a monopoly on parmesan itself, one which they succeeded in with the help of some political favours from the European Commission, and now there's no legally-usable generic name for this style of cheese in the EU. This whole thing was, of course, intensely political.