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

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

#231

Post by rsj_hn »

denton-scratch wrote: post #228
dmitriid wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you cannot make some whisky in, say, France, and sell it as "Scotch" I'm actually totally fine with geographic specifications for a general name. Like "Scotch whiskey" vs. "Irish whiskey". But some things do reach ridiculous proportions like Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey all trying to lay claim to yoghurt.

If it's Scotch, then it's "whisky", not "whiskey". Scotch Whisky has no "e".

In the U.S. and Ireland, "whiskey" is the accepted spelling. In Scotland and Canada, "whisky" is more common. These are just regional differences in spelling, and the proper usage will not be determined by where the drink is made but where the speaker is.

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

#232

Post by bassman9000 »

djbebs wrote: post #91
bassman9000 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is, what if you produce feta with the exact same ingredients and recipe in Australia? The customer gets the exact same thing, only made somewhere else. You can't replicate weather and other local conditions, specially on foods that require precise humidity/temp control, even air quality. So it's not the same thing. That's the whole point of geographical.

If you put it to the test you would be very hard pressed to find and identifiable difference, just like wine experts can't tell a 5$ wine from a 500$ wine

Now we're shifting goalposts. No longer about the combination of local conditions/local expertise/local ingredients resulting in a unique product, but about if you'll be able to tell them apart.

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

#233

Post by cheese_goddess »

jkldotio wrote: post #25
greatgib wrote: post #9

> The wording is strange, it looks like they say that it is wrong to say that it is inauthentic. But, there is no doubt, if you buy Greek feta that is manufactured in Australia in addition with different recipes and ingredients origins, it is clearly inauthentic and deceptive.

Feta comes from φέτα/~"slice", so it's not named after a region. Melbourne has one of the largest Greek populations in the world. Why don't these Greek people have right to their heritage? If the British were to start trying to say that "sandwich" was protected and American sandwiches were "inauthentic and deceptive" would you take such a claim seriously?

"Feta" is not the heritage of Greek people. It's a Protected Designation of Origin that covers specific geographical locations in Greece, the regions of Thessaly, Thrace, Epirus, Macedonia, Central Greece, Peloponse and Lesvos. Greeks, living in Greece, outside of these regsions, cannot sell their white sheep's milk cheese as feta. For example Cretan cheesemakers, 100% Greek themselves, can't sell their white sheep's milk as feta and must sell it as "white cheese" instead.

Now, if Greeks, living in Greece, making cheese with the milk of Greek animals can't call their cheese "feta" why should Australians whose grandparents came from Greece be able to?

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

#234

Post by cheese_goddess »

throw0101a wrote: post #34
greatgib wrote: post #9

> The wording is strange, it looks like they say that it is wrong to say that it is inauthentic. But, there is no doubt, if you buy Greek feta that is manufactured in Australia in addition with different recipes and ingredients origins, it is clearly inauthentic and deceptive.

> But, there is no doubt, if you buy Greek feta that is manufactured in Australia in addition with different recipes and ingredients origins, it is clearly inauthentic and deceptive. There is pizza. There is New York (style) pizza, Chicago (style) pizza, Detroit, Montreal, etc. Each of those (styles) can be made anywhere. There's no reason why Chicago-style (deep-dish) pizza couldn't be made in London. Beside the phy…

> Beside the physical location, what 'technical differences' are there between feta made in Greece versus Australia?

It's telling that you ask, because it means you don't know, but Greek feta is made with sheep's milk, optionally with up to 30% goat's milk, while cheese called "feta" made outside of Greece is almost always made with cow's milk. Greek feta has a characteristic piquant taste imparted to it by sheep and goat milk lipases, while cow's milk "feta" cheeses made outside Greece, do not.

Cheese made with sheep's milk has very different orgranoleptic characteristics than cheese made with cow's milk. Sheep's milk has almost double the fat and proteins than cow's milk so it's a much richer cheese. Sheep's milk also lacks the carotene in cow's milk so sheep's milk is actually white, while cow's milk is more of a yellow tinge (depending on breed and feed). Cow's milk used to make feta-like cheeses must often be treated by whitening agents or the cheese will not be the white colour expected of feta. Sheep's milk (and goat's milk) needs no such treatment.

I think the reason you ask the question is that you're used to eating cow's milk cheese sold as "feta" and thinking of it as "feta", when it's really nothing like feta. This is what you get when you let anyone call anything by any name. The meaning of words gets muddled and you end up thinking "eh, it's all the same thing anyway". Eventually, you lose the ability to distinguish different products by taste or smell because the character of the product gets diluted down so much that it's really a big same-y tasteless, odourless, boring thing. And then of course you wonder "why not just call it all the same"?

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

#235

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #201
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but there's nothing particularly special about Feta produced in Greece. Feta-style cheeses are produced across a fairly wide region in the Eastern Mediterranean, and I don't think the style is so singular that it can't be (or isn't) authentically reproduced elsewhere. More generally, I can understand consumer protections that focus on the nature of the product itself , but where the product comes from is…

> 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 fi…

> PDO regulations absolutely focus precisely on ingredients, process and the final product.

Lots of food types that are not geographic indications have strict requirements on ingredients, process, finished product.

The geographic restriction for "feta" serves no purpose except to favor the producers who lobbied for the geographic indication. You could strip off the geographic restriction, and you'd have a normal food quality regulation.

> I also note that most "feta" cheese made outside Greece is actually made with cow's milk.

Feta cheese has been made throughout the Eastern Mediterranean for ages, primarily using sheep's and goat's milk. There's nothing particularly special or distinctive or uniform about Greek feta. The historical reason why the geographic indication is limited to Greece is that it was created by the Greek government (i.e., it was a protectionist measure passed by the government to benefit its own cheese-makers). Greece then lobbied the EU to adopt the geographic indication. That's why the PDO is limited to Greece - not because what the Greeks call "feta" is different from cheeses produced in the same way right across the border in Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria or Turkey.

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

#236

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

cheese_goddess wrote: post #205
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feel these arguments are a bit disingenuous. 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. These laws are not about protecting the consumer from inauthentic products. They're about protecting producers from competition. Exclusive ownership of famous culinary names like "Feta" and "Champagne" is valuable, an…

> 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…

I've had feta in Greece and feta elsewhere in the Balkans. The range of differences between feta cheeses produced in different parts of Greece is not necessarily smaller than the difference between a feta produced in Epirus (Northwest Greece) and Albania (possibly even by Greek Albanians!). The geographic indication is nonsensical if the point is to ensure uniform quality or taste.

It sounds like what you're most worried about is Northern European producers using cow's milk, but there are producers throughout the Eastern Mediterranean using sheep's and goat's milk.

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

#237

Post by [deleted] »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #130
riffraff wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU system is pretty weak, but it's the result of trade offs, like everything else. You could be more strict, as France and Italy do for wines for example: italian wine can come with either an IGT label ("made in the right place") or a DOC one ("made in the right place in the right way") or a DOCG one ("made in the right place, the right way, and we actually checked the specific production"). The alternative is to…

The PDO approach impairs competition by making it impossible to legally refer to food with a name that people understand. In the US we see similar complaints arise from time to time when various agencies declare that you may not name your product "oat milk" because milk is defined as cow milk that is fortified with vitamins A and D (skim milk that is not fortified, for instance, gets to be named "imitation skim milk"…

[deleted]

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

#238

Post by anoncake »

dopidopHN wrote: post #50
anoncake wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ignored > but let's assume that you can make sheep milk in Australia that has the same properties as Greek sheep milk.

I thought it was encompass in « more than the sum of its part ». The milk is core, the process is key, the conservation and timing is deceptively important. You might feed the same breed of cow the same altitude grass, at the same season… and still end up with a different product. But I see your point, and I think it’s a reasonable one. It’s possible to duplicate a cheese making process and be successful ( or wine: C…

Valid point. If the conditions in a given region actually make it impossible to replicate Greek Feta – then you just can't make Feta there.

However, it might make sense to allow some leeway to avoid unnecessary shipping. Not very relevant in Macedonia, but if an Australian gets Feta from Greece instead of a local substitute which is close enough for most customers that should be an explicit decision on their part.

In any case, you can still look at the "made in..." label to determine the product's origin.

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

#239

Post by oh_sigh »

denton-scratch wrote: post #226
oh_sigh wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, food snobbery at its finest. Quality and garbage is generally easy to distinguish by price and taste, and shopkeepers discretion. And I really don't understand what part of the parm making process is necessary to happen in central/northern italy vs anywhere else in the world.

So that's OK; if you don't think parmesan from Parma is better, just buy Kraft parmesan - it's a fifth of the price. But if there aren't labelling laws, then I won't be able to buy real parmesan with confidence. Price is not a reliable guide to quality. Nor is "shopkeeper's discretion". Knowing that the cheese is made in accordance with strict regulations is a good guide.

Again, food snobbery. "If it isn't from Parma, then it must be Kraft quality"

> But if there aren't labelling laws,

No one argued against labeling laws except the strawman in your head. The question is whether something is specifically necessary about occuring in the region of Parma in the cheese making process of Parmesan. I don't think it is necessary to not let Kraft call their product "parmesan cheese" for the sake of consumer protection, when existing laws already make it illegal to falsely label your product - for example, trademark laws would not allow you to fake the DOCG label, and existing laws don't let you lie about the origin of the product (Kraft could not say "Made in Parma, Italy" on their product).

> Knowing that the cheese is made in accordance with strict regulations is a good guide.

Again, which is nothing I argued against. You can have strict regulations while not restricting the commonly understood usage of a word. In fact, you seem to agree in your actual usage, since you called it "Kraft parmesan", and not "Kraft parmesan-like cheese product"

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

#240

Post by cheese_goddess »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #236
cheese_goddess wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've had feta in Greece and feta elsewhere in the Balkans. The range of differences between feta cheeses produced in different parts of Greece is not necessarily smaller than the difference between a feta produced in Epirus (Northwest Greece) and Albania (possibly even by Greek Albanians!). The geographic indication is nonsensical if the point is to ensure uniform quality or taste. It sounds like what you're most wor…

There are sheep and goat's milk cheeses made in the Mediterrannean and in the Balkans and as far as Romania, yes, but those cheeses are not made in the same way as feta and they have a different character than feta. For example Sirene, a Romanian cheese is sometimes made with sheep and goat's milk, but it's a softer and overall milder cheese than feta. They would taste same-y to anyone unused to eating for example feta or sirene, but not to Greeks and Romanians.

Cheese made across the border from Epirus in Albania (careful: the Greek-speaking Orthodox minority in Albania are Northern Epirotes, not "Greek Albanians") may be very similar, but it's not called "feta" in Albanian. I don't know what it's called to be honest, but "feta" is the name traditionally used by Greeks. So in this case it wouldn't make sense to call it "feta" even if it has a similar character to feta. Which, to be honest, I don't know because I haven't tasted that cheese.

Anyway the point is that you can tell feta apart from ""Feta-like" cheese produced in any number of places around the world", contrary to what you said.

And in any case, it seems to me very likely that before reading my comment you didn't realise that feta is not made with cow's milk, as most people don't, so I think you should concede that your original comment was made given incomplete information.

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