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

301–310 of 317 posts

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

#301

Post by puszczyk »

rossvor wrote: post #278
firstcommentyo wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to MMXXII. About X centuries ago "we" imported the Hindu-Arabic numerals. I know, Latin numbers carry the myth of being more "safe" but really you should try the arabian numerals. They revolutionized math and eased reading text alongside. thumbs-up

It's a convention to use roman numerals for centuries in some european countries. Parent poster probably just done it out of habit.

Thanks, I wasn’t aware it is not a “global” convention and wasn’t sure what does the parent make fun of.

One learns every day :) I will be more careful about this when writing centuries in English the next time.

Also this poster on quora have a detailed list https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-write-century-numbers-with-I...

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

#302

Post by InCityDreams »

kmlx wrote: post #292
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…

what i want to know is how can such a small community have so much clout in european politics that they managed to create the “Geographical Indication” so that no one else can create their own parmigiano cheese. do they fear competition that much? does their product really offer nothing extra compared to a parmigiano produced anywhere else?

Imagine a kansas farm producing texan beef. Then a nebraskan farm joining in. What's to stop ottowa from taking a slice of the pie?

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

#303

Post by yreg »

rocqua wrote: post #288
yreg wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>perhaps the buyers only value the "stringent quality check" of the mark, and do not care for the "region check"

This goes hand in hand since the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has no interest in verifying quality of cheese from other regions.

The cheese producers located elsewhere are free to found their own consortium for quality checking, build up its reputation and convince customers to value it the same as parmigiano reggiano.

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

#304

Post by jquery »

robonerd wrote: post #215
jquery wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s no big deal why don’t they put “wood pulp” on the packaging? The fact it saves them money is too convenient by half and if they want to sell it they should be forced to disclose how they’re making it shake easier.

When they're following the law, which is most of the time, they put "cellulose" in the ingredients list on the package. This sort of product is usually not mislabeled. In that case it wasn't, and the company was rightly busted for it. It isn't called "wood pulp" in the ingredient list because it isn't wood pulp, it's cellulose powder derived from wood pulp (or cotton.) Listing cellulose as "wood pulp" would be like l…

In a lot of cases these same industries co-wrote the law so it gets a bit circular to cite the law as justification. But thanks for the longer explanation. I still feel they should be required to put what it’s derived from. Listing gelatin as “gelatin derived from pig” would be more helpful to make informed consumer choices.

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

#305

Post by jquery »

iostream24 wrote: post #255
perihelions wrote: post #2

I found technical details about the device: https://www.isenet.it/product/pharmaseq-products/ It's tiny (500 microns), passive, photocell-powered (you point a laser at it), and encapsulated in an inert SiO2 coating.

Is it digestible, or rather passable in stools with no harm entailed? My favorite part of Parmesan is the rind

Your standards for food should probably be higher than “passable in stools”. Not judging but that seems like a low bar no?

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

#306

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

donthellbanme wrote: post #268
matthewmcg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can get good canned tomatoes (I like the Flora brand San Marzano D.O.P, about $5.50 for a 28oz can), this is a great 20 minute recipe that will usually beat any pre-made sauce: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015987-classic-marinara...

Fresh is always better, even if you don't have acces to San Marazano tomatoes. This tomato sauce recipe goes out the the poor guys here. I imagine we are the minority here? 1. Tomatoes--any kind. You will buy them initially to use them for sandwiches, and maybe a salad, but will be left over with a bowl of soft tomatoes at tge end of the week. The rest left older will start to rot, so why not make tomato sauce. 2. In…

A couple comments:

1) I like to add fresh or dried basil to my tomato sauces. I also grow oregano (it's more honest to say that I can't kill it since it spread everywhere!) and will add a little also.

2) Pizza dough does best when made on the "wet" (higher hydration) side. I learned about these: https://www.amazon.com/Winco-APZS-16-Winware-Seamless-Alumin... from a commercial pizza maker and never looked back. Cooks evenly top & bottom in my oven. It's become one of those things I can't believe I ever lived without. Treat them like a cast iron skillet (another good thing to make pizza in) and don't wash them.

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

#307

Post by SeanLuke »

83 wrote: post #295
SeanLuke wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference in cost is in the number of months of aging. Cheap Parmigiano-Reggiano might be 20-24 months old. It gets much better tasting, and more expensive, at 36 months, and better still (and more costly) at 40 months. We'd buy Parmigiano-Reggiano at Iper La Grande, a massive grocery store (imagine if a Wegmans and a Target merged) in northern Italy; there 40 month old would be about twice the price as 24 m…

That some really odd pricing, there's no investment out there where you could purchase for x, let it sit for 16 months, and then sell for 2x. You'd think the manufacturers or some other entity would just be buying all the 24month to age another 16 months to double their money (less some warehouse / transport overhead).

This isn't just stacking palettes of crackers. Parmesan requires climate-controlled warehouses, and must be often tested, repositioned, and (yes) guarded. It's also a more risky investment.

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

#308

Post by rocqua »

pengaru wrote: post #148
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 don't see the problem, it's a sort of collective regional trademark that the makers of this traditional regional cheese carrying this specific branding (and their customers expecting authentic product) benefit from. If you don't have a problem with the likes of Apple litigating counterfeit products using their trademarked brand, why would you have a problem with this?

> If you don't have a problem with the likes of Apple litigating counterfeit products using their trademarked brand, why would you have a problem with this?

Put simply, because I care about who manufactured electronics, but I don't care where cheese was made. I do care who made it, but not which village it comes from.

Specifically the idea that one region is so special as to deserve legal protection offends me.

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

#309

Post by denton-scratch »

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”.

There's been a couple of comments suggesting that emmental and gruyère are easily confused. I don't find that, with one exception.

With the help of my local cheese shop (mentioned upthread) I came across what they call "proper" emmental, which is a very mature emmental, a bit like a mature gouda. Only a bit rubbery. And silly expensive, but very nice.

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

#310

Post by p_l »

kmlx wrote: post #292
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…

what i want to know is how can such a small community have so much clout in european politics that they managed to create the “Geographical Indication” so that no one else can create their own parmigiano cheese. do they fear competition that much? does their product really offer nothing extra compared to a parmigiano produced anywhere else?

You don't really need political clout directly, though it helps to get politicians in ones country to be invested in the project. Quite often it's politicians that directly start working on this, even.

The "protected designation of origin" is essentially a trademark that helps ensure that if you buy something marked "Parmigiano Reggiano" or "Parmesan", it's going to be cheese done using specific recipe, coming from its traditional, original region. It doesn't stop you from using the same recipe elsewhere, it just means you can't sell it as being the same. PDOs are generally used to protect local traditional products, though politics can get a bit cutthroat about it (I recall some... hot discussions regarding PDO for vodka)

Post reply on HN