Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

foodandwine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 317 posts

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#281

Post by Mariehane »

bleuarff wrote: post #267
dsco wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does it say anything about blockchains in the article and how often do you think about how much you hate them?

From TFA: "The innovation combines food-safe Casein labels with the p-Chip micro transponder — a blockchain crypto-anchor that creates a digital 'twin' for physical items. This scannable new food tag is smaller than a grain of salt and highly durable, delivering next-generation visibility and traceability." I, for one, had never heard the term "blockchain crypto-anchor" before.

Wow, they also make sure to throw in “digital twin” even if that makes no sense in this context.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#282

Post by cheese_goddess »

kergonath wrote: post #229
denton-scratch wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I could be wrong. The AOC rules certainly came fully into force then. And as a kid in France <= 15, I'd buy Gruyére in the grocers, and it wouldn't have the snazzy Swiss cross printed on the rind. Perhaps until then, "Gruyére" was a generic term, and they'd sell you Gruyére or Comté, whichever they had.

It was used as a generic term. Even now, people commonly say “gruyère” when they mean “emmental”.

Right, so I guess the video is evidence that the producers of Comté were trying to establish an identity for their product, separate from Gruyère, but consumers, as usual, used brand names as product category names.

That's very common. In Greece for instance there's a PDO cheese called "kasseri" but all of northern Greece calls all hard or yellow cheeses "kasseri". Conversely, they call all white cheeses "tyri" ("cheese"), which usually (but not always) means feta, which is in turn a PDO name for a specific kind of white cheese made in certain areas of Greece only.

I guess it's the same thing with French cheeses and Italian cheeses, and every other place's cheeses. Heh.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#283

Post by cheese_goddess »

arthurcolle wrote: post #203
cheese_goddess wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the fast way. Normally it should be aged when it's still a head of cheese and not a slice in someone's fridge. Far as I can tell that takes more than a year, just because it's such a big head of cheese. The advantage of aging a mere slice is that it ages many times faster.

Thank you cheese_goddess :prayer_emoji:

You also need a :cheese_emoji: to please the cheese_goddess :P

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#284

Post by dagw »

HelloNurse wrote: post #274
pacbard wrote: post #15

I'm curious to know which cheesemakers are using these chips. If you look at a wheel of Parmigiano (a whole one), you will see a number stamped on it. That's the cheesemaker's matriculation number in the consortium. There are 313 active ones right now. Some of them are very big (especially the ones in the lowlands) and some of them are very small (mostly the ones up in the hills). The small cheesemakers have trouble…

Embedding these chips is neither difficult nor expensively high-tech, and verification isn't performed by the cheesemaker: why shouldn't small establishments participate in the program? On an overseas store shelf the alternative is between real Parmigiano-Reggiano (if the experimentation is successful, with a chip) and counterfeit shit, not between different cheesemakers of the consortium (who, if they care, adopt th…

On an overseas store shelf the alternative is between real Parmigiano-Reggiano (if the experimentation is successful, with a chip) and counterfeit shit, not between different cheesemakers of the consortium

On my overseas store shelf I have a choice between 3-5 different brands of real Parmigiano-Reggiano, with the most expensive one being twice the price of the cheapest one, so there is obviously some competition going on. The only other real competitor is Grana Padano, which most people consider a cheaper substitute.

Of course one or more of those brands claiming to be Parmigiano-Reggiano might very well be fake and I'd have no way of knowing.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#285

Post by beeforpork »

pmontra wrote: post #243
jquery wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t look edible to me.

It is not but it's half a millimeter and inert. I guess that all of us had sand in our mouths and occasionally ingested part of it. Furthermore we shouldn't have that part of the cheese.

The rind is very good for cooking sauces. You pull it out afterwards, but the chip could, of course, fall out into the sauce during cooking.

So if they put electronic sh*t into my food, I do not want to buy that anymore.

Probably it does not need to be declared, so I don't even know I am eating electronics.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#286

Post by justsomeguy123 »

glaucon wrote: post #157
jeffdn wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the rind, which you'd be hard pressed to eat!

Pretty mainstream to use Parmesan cheese rinds as part of making soups and stews of various kinds https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-to-use-parmesan-chees...

Wow, TIL.

I always assumed the Parmesan rind is wax.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#287

Post by rocqua »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #45
rocqua wrote: post #22

I am all for trademarks. But 'only things made here can have this name' is silly protectionism. Adding electronics to 'fix fraud' really is just worsening the original product. If this goes through I would prefer the fraudulent stuff over the real deal.

> is silly protectionism It's not silly. It's protecting the buyers from frauds. Parmigiano-Reggiano is made in Emilia Romagna, in the Parma-Reggio (Emilia) area. That's the only real deal. Like Champagne which is made only in the Champagne wine region in France. If it's not from there, it's not the same product. It might even be better according to personal taste, for example I prefer Franciacorta, which is from Fra…

> It's protecting the buyers from frauds.

> Parmigiano-Reggiano is made in Emilia Romagna, in the Parma-Reggio (Emilia) area.

> That's the only real deal.

I think this distinction is silly. I don't think the region the product came from matters much. More specifically, I believe certain regions claiming "this is only the real deal if it comes from here" are being chauvinistic, or maybe just trying to protect their local economy.

Champagne is equally silly as Parmigiano-Reggiano. And there are many more similar regional trade-marks. You cannot call your search engine google because of (among other things) trademark law. But this is not a regional trade-mark. Its because you are impersonating a different company.

I actually favor normal trade-marks. They are the most reasonable form of intellectual property.I believe customers need to be protected from products pretending they are from a different company. This allows them to hold the company responsible. It allows them to judge a product by the reputation of the company, and it allows the company to build a reputation. I do not believe customers need to be protected from products claiming to be from a region that 'makes the product special'.

It seems to me that, regional trade marks are not so much about protecting the customer, but instead about protecting the region economy or prestige.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#288

Post by rocqua »

yreg wrote: post #273
Nullabillity wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so why does the region matter, iff you follow the same method and live up to the same quality standards?

It's up to the buyers to say whether it matters and they say it does.

The buyers did not decide to give this regional trade-mark. That was some government somewhere. The buyers tend to follow that. And perhaps the buyers only value the "stringent quality check" of the mark, and do not care for the "region check" but they have no alternatives.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#289

Post by rocqua »

guerrilla wrote: post #35
rocqua wrote: post #22

I am all for trademarks. But 'only things made here can have this name' is silly protectionism. Adding electronics to 'fix fraud' really is just worsening the original product. If this goes through I would prefer the fraudulent stuff over the real deal.

> I am all for trademarks. But 'only things made here can have this name' is silly protectionism Can you explain what you mean? This seems like a contradiction... Is branding not trademark? If you're for trademarks, why would someone else be permitted to use their branding? (Devil's advocate. I'm not actually all for trademarks.)

I believe trademarks protect customers by allowing a company to build a reputation and giving a customer certainty about who they are buying from.

I do not believe trademarks that protect a region, rather than a company actually have benefit to a customer. Instead it feels to me like these regional trade-marks are ways a government can appease a local community by enshrining in law that they are the 'one true place'. This is benefiting the local community at the cost of anyone else who is capable of delivering the same quality but is now excluded only by virtue of their location.

Or, looking at it more cynically, this is a way for people living on one side of a line to put one over on people living on the other side of the line. They do this by enshrining in law the idea "we are better than the people who do not live here" as if that is a permanent thing. The arrogance, the self-importance, entiteledness and small-mindedness of that really annoy me. Just because your region was the best at a thing at some point in history does not mean that, in perpetuity, other regions will never match your quality.

Re: Parmigiano Reggiano makers embedding tiny trackers in rind to fight cheese fraud

#290

Post by rocqua »

iambateman wrote: post #39
rocqua wrote: post #22

I am all for trademarks. But 'only things made here can have this name' is silly protectionism. Adding electronics to 'fix fraud' really is just worsening the original product. If this goes through I would prefer the fraudulent stuff over the real deal.

It sounds like you are not all for trademarks.

I think a trademark should show you 'who' made it. Not 'where' it was made.
Post reply on HN