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You mean like the traditional Croatian wine Prosek being banned from sale because it sounds too similar to prosecco which was developed long after (and they are

You mean like the traditional Croatian wine Prosek being banned from sale because it sounds too similar to prosecco which was developed long after (and they are different types of wine).[1] Or the feta cheese I buy from Germany that can't call itself feta and that anyone in day to day conversation will refer to as feta. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/us-croatia-food-eu-idUSBRE93M0KX20130423 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/us-croatia-food-eu...

pessimizer 13y ago
Those sound like debatable edge cases.
coldtea 13y ago
>Or the feta cheese I buy from Germany that can't call itself feta and that anyone in day to day conversation will refer to as feta. And that anybody that has eaten actual feta will tell you immediately it's a bad imitation (often with the wrong process and/or ingredients). (Same goes for any "feta" sold in American supermarkets, at least Kroger, Walmart etc that I know of (as in the US the point of origin protection doesn't hold). Also real feta is NEVER sold in crumbles, as you often find it there). Whereas American may like their food standardised by restaurant chain (I can walk into any X chain and get the same food), in Europe it has traditionally be standardised by region (local cuisine, etc). So think of it the same as Burger King being unable to name a product "Big Mac". Only instead of protecting/benefiting just some private chain, it protects/benefits a whole country/region where the food was first developed. Those protections, besides having rules for the "point of origin" also have strict guidelines on the ingredients etc. So you know your feta is X% milk etc, fermented for Y time, etc, and not some random cheap knockout. Of course, nothing stops a company from selling the same product, or a different mix. They just can't name it feta. They can include a sign like "feta like product" though.
- mjn 13y ago
  I do think the current situation around feta is better than the previous confusing one, where lots of products which were clearly not feta were allowed to be labeled as "feta". But I personally would prefer that methods/contents be regulated rather than location of production. I do think it's a good thing that what used to be called "Danish feta" is now "salatost" ("salad cheese"), because it is simply not feta. But I sympathize with the French, Israeli, and New Zealand feta that's no longer allowed to be called "feta" in the EU, because those countries do produce some genuine feta, in every sense except being produced in the wrong location. On the other hand, I think the same of champagne, and I doubt France would be willing to trade the exclusive right to the word "champagne" in return for getting to call some of their cheese "feta"...
  - coldtea 13y ago
    I see what you mean, but I find it also helps protect traditional regions that came up with the thing first, so I'm for it for that reason. Sometimes other places can duplicate the methods/contents, but they still lack the definitive knack than the region that invented the stuff has. And since the product was also named in the region, it's only fair for them to be able to use it. Now, the French might not get feta but they get Champagne protected, and generally everybody region benefits somehow. And it's not like patent laws, where you cannot put out a competing product. It's merely like a trademark: you have to name it differently. So, if the french feta is OK, it still has a chance to catch on, just under a different name.
- jkldotio 13y ago
  >bad imitation (often with the wrong process and/or ingredients). But who is to decide? Imagine if the same thing happened to hamburgers or endless other common things. although understandable the reasoning is already flimsy when it's a region but when it's applied to generic names which have been around for a very long time then who is to decide? For example, I come from Melbourne in Australia where we have the world's third biggest Greek speaking population after Athens and Thessaloniki. Many came before Greece's entry into the European Communities. Feta means slice, "φέτα", so they can't sell a slice of cheese in the EU, made perfectly in the traditional manner, calling it a slice in their own language as they have always done? They are Greek citizens (as well as Australian), they speak Greek, they've been making that cheese since forever I can't see how you can retrospectively then say people can't call it that. As with the case of the Croatian wine, it's vandalizing history and existing linguistic practice.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >But who is to decide? In Europe it's easy: the region that created AND named the stuff is to decide. >Imagine if the same thing happened to hamburgers or endless other common things. It already happens, just not in a regional level but a corporate one. You cannot call your burger a "Big Mac" or "Baconator". Also remember that the names we're talking about are not generic as "hamburger", but specific. Feta is a specific product, whereas the analogous to your hamburger example would be if a region has a monopoly on "cheese". >Feta means slice, "φέτα", so they can't sell a slice of cheese in the EU, made perfectly in the traditional manner, calling it a slice in their own language as they have always done? Feta is the word for slice, but is also a specific name for a specific cheese -- not to be confused. (The fact that they are Greek citizens doesn't play any role, the right for Point of Origin protection went to Greece, not Greeks in general. Else any company worldwide could hire some Greeks or some French, and say it makes Feta or Champagne, etc). >they've been making that cheese since forever I can't see how you can retrospectively then say people can't call it that. Well, that "forever" is merely a century or less, since most of them weren't longer than that in Australia. Compare this with over two millennia of Feta tradition in Greece. In any case, it's an EU law to protect the regions that create specific stuff and the consumers. Without it our supermarkets would be full of crap sold as "X", made for cheap in some foreign country with no quality control, and sold as genuine X. We love our original, and quality/origin protected food a lot to let that happen.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > They just can't name it feta. They can include a sign like "feta like product" though. No, if the name is a protected name it can't appear on the label or any advertising. Champagne is from Champagne. There's no such thing as 'wine produced to the champagne method', even though some Cava (etc) are produced to that method.
Xylakant 13y ago
Most of the feta cheese you buy as "feta" that tries to be and still isn't real feta is actually cow milk cheese. The taste and texture is different, so the product shouldn't be called feta. The fact that people colloquially refer to things by the wrong name shouldn't allow producers to mislead me by labeling things with the wrong name.
- unreal37 13y ago
  It's a big gray area for me. What if someone followed the traditional methods and ingredients of real feta, made the best feta cheese you ever tasted in your life, BUT it was not made in Greece. Should that be allowed to call itself feta? I am against monopolies generally, and this geographical indicator stuff around products that have existed for centuries (Champagne, Bordeaux, Bourbon, Parmesan, Chablis, etc) rubs me the wrong way. It's granting a small region a monopoly on a descriptive word that everyone uses to describe the product, with no indication of quality anyways. What if Diamonds had to come from Russia or else they were not allowed to be called diamonds? Or if sugar had to come from America or else it had to be called something else? Confusion would reign. Its unfair competition, really.
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    Bad examples: * Champagne is a sparkling wine made with a specific method from a specific kind of grapes grown on a specific soil in a specific climate. You can reproduce the method elsewhere and use the same grapes, but you can't reproduce the soil or the climate. Hence, the end-result is different. It's a sparkling wine and there are a lot of sparkling wines that are equal or better than a mediocre champagne, but they're still champagne. * Bordeaux is nothing more than a regional specifier. It encompasses the climate and the soil found there. It neither indicates quality nor taste - though many people associate it with both due to some of the best wines being produced there. What would any consumer win if all of a sudden wine produced in Berlin could be labeled "Bordeaux" - the one person winning here would be the seller. Is that fair? * Cheese is even harder. Roquefort derives much of its taste and character from the microclimate found in the caves around the town of Roquefort. Something similar is true for Parmesan: Each cheese labeled as parmesan must be made by a specific recipe and is checked by a local authority. So I guess you could make the same product and ship it to Parma and have it certified - but would that be worth it? Neither of the words is a descriptive word such as "Diamond" or "Sugar". The descriptive words in your cases are "Sparkling Wine", "Red Wine", "Whisky", "Hard Cheese". It's a brand name, like iPhone is Apples particular type of smartphone and Nexus Googles type. All in all: What would the consumers gain if all of a sudden all blue cheese was roquefort and all hard cheese parmesan, all red wine Bordeaux, all whisky Bourbon and all sparkling wine Champagne? Pretty much nothing. (*) Sidenote: Wiener Schnitzel must be veal in germany. If it's made from pork it's "Schnitzel Wiener Art". Now, that's stupid.

pessimizer 13y ago

Those sound like debatable edge cases.

coldtea 13y ago

>Or the feta cheese I buy from Germany that can't call itself feta and that anyone in day to day conversation will refer to as feta. And that anybody that has eaten actual feta will tell you immediately it's a bad imitation (often with the wrong process and/or ingredients). (Same goes for any "feta" sold in American supermarkets, at least Kroger, Walmart etc that I know of (as in the US the point of origin protection doesn't hold). Also real feta is NEVER sold in crumbles, as you often find it there). Whereas American may like their food standardised by restaurant chain (I can walk into any X chain and get the same food), in Europe it has traditionally be standardised by region (local cuisine, etc). So think of it the same as Burger King being unable to name a product "Big Mac". Only instead of protecting/benefiting just some private chain, it protects/benefits a whole country/region where the food was first developed. Those protections, besides having rules for the "point of origin" also have strict guidelines on the ingredients etc. So you know your feta is X% milk etc, fermented for Y time, etc, and not some random cheap knockout. Of course, nothing stops a company from selling the same product, or a different mix. They just can't name it feta. They can include a sign like "feta like product" though.

mjn 13y ago
I do think the current situation around feta is better than the previous confusing one, where lots of products which were clearly not feta were allowed to be labeled as "feta". But I personally would prefer that methods/contents be regulated rather than location of production. I do think it's a good thing that what used to be called "Danish feta" is now "salatost" ("salad cheese"), because it is simply not feta. But I sympathize with the French, Israeli, and New Zealand feta that's no longer allowed to be called "feta" in the EU, because those countries do produce some genuine feta, in every sense except being produced in the wrong location. On the other hand, I think the same of champagne, and I doubt France would be willing to trade the exclusive right to the word "champagne" in return for getting to call some of their cheese "feta"...
- coldtea 13y ago
  I see what you mean, but I find it also helps protect traditional regions that came up with the thing first, so I'm for it for that reason. Sometimes other places can duplicate the methods/contents, but they still lack the definitive knack than the region that invented the stuff has. And since the product was also named in the region, it's only fair for them to be able to use it. Now, the French might not get feta but they get Champagne protected, and generally everybody region benefits somehow. And it's not like patent laws, where you cannot put out a competing product. It's merely like a trademark: you have to name it differently. So, if the french feta is OK, it still has a chance to catch on, just under a different name.
jkldotio 13y ago
>bad imitation (often with the wrong process and/or ingredients). But who is to decide? Imagine if the same thing happened to hamburgers or endless other common things. although understandable the reasoning is already flimsy when it's a region but when it's applied to generic names which have been around for a very long time then who is to decide? For example, I come from Melbourne in Australia where we have the world's third biggest Greek speaking population after Athens and Thessaloniki. Many came before Greece's entry into the European Communities. Feta means slice, "φέτα", so they can't sell a slice of cheese in the EU, made perfectly in the traditional manner, calling it a slice in their own language as they have always done? They are Greek citizens (as well as Australian), they speak Greek, they've been making that cheese since forever I can't see how you can retrospectively then say people can't call it that. As with the case of the Croatian wine, it's vandalizing history and existing linguistic practice.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >But who is to decide? In Europe it's easy: the region that created AND named the stuff is to decide. >Imagine if the same thing happened to hamburgers or endless other common things. It already happens, just not in a regional level but a corporate one. You cannot call your burger a "Big Mac" or "Baconator". Also remember that the names we're talking about are not generic as "hamburger", but specific. Feta is a specific product, whereas the analogous to your hamburger example would be if a region has a monopoly on "cheese". >Feta means slice, "φέτα", so they can't sell a slice of cheese in the EU, made perfectly in the traditional manner, calling it a slice in their own language as they have always done? Feta is the word for slice, but is also a specific name for a specific cheese -- not to be confused. (The fact that they are Greek citizens doesn't play any role, the right for Point of Origin protection went to Greece, not Greeks in general. Else any company worldwide could hire some Greeks or some French, and say it makes Feta or Champagne, etc). >they've been making that cheese since forever I can't see how you can retrospectively then say people can't call it that. Well, that "forever" is merely a century or less, since most of them weren't longer than that in Australia. Compare this with over two millennia of Feta tradition in Greece. In any case, it's an EU law to protect the regions that create specific stuff and the consumers. Without it our supermarkets would be full of crap sold as "X", made for cheap in some foreign country with no quality control, and sold as genuine X. We love our original, and quality/origin protected food a lot to let that happen.
DanBC 13y ago
> They just can't name it feta. They can include a sign like "feta like product" though. No, if the name is a protected name it can't appear on the label or any advertising. Champagne is from Champagne. There's no such thing as 'wine produced to the champagne method', even though some Cava (etc) are produced to that method.

Xylakant 13y ago

Most of the feta cheese you buy as "feta" that tries to be and still isn't real feta is actually cow milk cheese. The taste and texture is different, so the product shouldn't be called feta. The fact that people colloquially refer to things by the wrong name shouldn't allow producers to mislead me by labeling things with the wrong name.

unreal37 13y ago
It's a big gray area for me. What if someone followed the traditional methods and ingredients of real feta, made the best feta cheese you ever tasted in your life, BUT it was not made in Greece. Should that be allowed to call itself feta? I am against monopolies generally, and this geographical indicator stuff around products that have existed for centuries (Champagne, Bordeaux, Bourbon, Parmesan, Chablis, etc) rubs me the wrong way. It's granting a small region a monopoly on a descriptive word that everyone uses to describe the product, with no indication of quality anyways. What if Diamonds had to come from Russia or else they were not allowed to be called diamonds? Or if sugar had to come from America or else it had to be called something else? Confusion would reign. Its unfair competition, really.
- Xylakant 13y ago
  Bad examples: * Champagne is a sparkling wine made with a specific method from a specific kind of grapes grown on a specific soil in a specific climate. You can reproduce the method elsewhere and use the same grapes, but you can't reproduce the soil or the climate. Hence, the end-result is different. It's a sparkling wine and there are a lot of sparkling wines that are equal or better than a mediocre champagne, but they're still champagne. * Bordeaux is nothing more than a regional specifier. It encompasses the climate and the soil found there. It neither indicates quality nor taste - though many people associate it with both due to some of the best wines being produced there. What would any consumer win if all of a sudden wine produced in Berlin could be labeled "Bordeaux" - the one person winning here would be the seller. Is that fair? * Cheese is even harder. Roquefort derives much of its taste and character from the microclimate found in the caves around the town of Roquefort. Something similar is true for Parmesan: Each cheese labeled as parmesan must be made by a specific recipe and is checked by a local authority. So I guess you could make the same product and ship it to Parma and have it certified - but would that be worth it? Neither of the words is a descriptive word such as "Diamond" or "Sugar". The descriptive words in your cases are "Sparkling Wine", "Red Wine", "Whisky", "Hard Cheese". It's a brand name, like iPhone is Apples particular type of smartphone and Nexus Googles type. All in all: What would the consumers gain if all of a sudden all blue cheese was roquefort and all hard cheese parmesan, all red wine Bordeaux, all whisky Bourbon and all sparkling wine Champagne? Pretty much nothing. (*) Sidenote: Wiener Schnitzel must be veal in germany. If it's made from pork it's "Schnitzel Wiener Art". Now, that's stupid.