The EU’s disputed system of geographical indications is taking over the planet (2017)

> If the goal were simply to make sure that Feta always tastes like "authentic" Feta, then the regulations would focus on ingredients, process and the final product. But regulations about where the product is produced exist because producers want to exclude competition.

This is not true and you don't know things as well as you think you do. PDO regulations absolutely focus precisely on ingredients, process and the final product.

For example, PDO regulations for feta stipulate, among other details, that it must be made with sheep's milk with the addition of up to 30% goat's milk and that the milk must come from animals born and bred in the Greek regions of Thessaly, Thrace, Epirus, Macedonia, Central Greece, Peloponse and Lesvos, from the breeds adapted to the area and reared by traditional methods. The fat content of the milk must be at least 6% w/w and the pH of the milk before the cheese is made must be at least 6.5. The milk must be made into cheese at most 48 hours after milking. The finished cheese must be aged for at least two months in brine containing 7% NaCl w/w. The final product must be a cheese "distinguished by its slightly acid and salty taste and its properties of mild lipolysis" (lipolysis imparts a piquant taste to cheese), with a maximum water content of 58%, minimum fat content of 43%, and 2% salt in water. There are more detailed instructions here:

https://ec.europa.eu/geographical-indications-register/eambr...

So the PDO regulates the provenance of the sheep milk, as well as the location the cheese is manufactured, but obviously the focus is on the quality and organoleptic characterisics of the ingredients in the specified territories, and that because the same characteristics are not reproducible in different territories (for example because the breeds of milk producing animals are different and the flora they feed on, and therefore the soil bacteria that flavour this flora, are different).

I also note that most "feta" cheese made outside Greece is actually made with cow's milk. For example, this was the case with French, German and Danish "feta" before Greece successfully defended its PDO and it is still the case today for feta made in the US. I'm not sure about Australia, but it's probably the same there. In Greece, cheese made in the same way as feta but with cow's milk is called "telemes" and is also a PDO cheese.

As far as I can tell, no "feta" cheese made outside Greece has the piquant taste imparted to cheese milk by lipases, that characterises Greek feta.

What about consumers that want a guarantee on the production?

Can you see a world where consumers and producers are not in opposition, and actually have some alignment of interests?

> You would be extremely hard-pressed to tell "authentic" Feta cheese apart from "Feta-like" cheese produced in any number of places around the world.

That's not true, because most feta produced outside Greece is made with cow's milk, rather than sheep and goat's milk. In Greece it's made with sheep and goat's milk.

Why does that make any difference? First, because cow's milk is relatively tasteless compared to sheep and goat's milk. Goat's milk in particular has a strong "gamey" flavour and sheep's milk is also "heavier" than cow's milk.

Sheep's milk also has a different composition than cow's milk. Depending on breeds and season, sheep's milk has almost double the amount of fats and proteins (caseins and whey proteins) than cow's milk (and also goat's milk, which is about the same as cow's milk in composition).

More importantly, feta made with sheep and goat's milk has a piquant taste imparted by the lipolysis that is the result of lipases found particularly in goat's milk. Although to be fair, lipases are nowadays added to cheese milk as an additive, because they are destroyed by pasteurisation (and most Greek cheeses are not made with raw milk). However in practice lipases are never added to cow's milk "feta" possibly because consumers used to cow's milk "feta" don't expect it to be spicy-hot, as real feta should be.

There's also various other organoleptic characteristics that distinguish sheep and goat's milk cheeses from cow's milk, for example the firmness of the paste - more elastic in cow's milk cheeses, more crumbly in sheep and goat's cheeses. etc. etc.

tl;dr, yes, you can absolutely tell the difference between Greek feta and "feta" from outside Greece, provided you know what Greek feta tastes like. Which I think you probably don't. I think you're just assuming that it must all be a big bunch of lies to sell cheese that's just the same as any cheese.

Well, it's not.

> I guess feta is a good example of the problem of defining these things by region not process. I feel pretty confident that "feta" shouldn't belong to any one country in the region with a tradition of making it; on the other hand differentiating it from cheap knock offs also makes sense to me.

The PDO for feta protects a cheese made in Greece that's traditionally called feta. Other countries around the Mediterrannean and in Eastern Europe make similar (but not identical) cheeses but they call it by different names, for example Sirene in Romania (which is made with cow's milk rather than sheep and goat's milk as in Greece).

I don't think it makes sense to mix up the protection for feta with protections for sirene, for example. Sirene should be protected by a PDO specific to its own make, ingredients and characteristics.

Just because lots of cheeses around the area look similar to feta, doesn't mean we can just lump them all together with feta. Otherwise, why not lump Roquefort together with Gorgonzola and Stilton? They're all blue cheeses made in Europe, after all.

“you wouldnt steal a car”though :)))