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Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

As I understand it, EU Protected Designation of Origin rules are really broad and ban you from even describing a cheese as being in the style of Grana Padano or Parmesan, at least when selling it commercially. They're not just about protecting the consumer but a kind of protectionism. So ever since the protection was extended to the word Parmesan (for a while only Parmigiano-Reggiano was protected) supermarkets here in the UK have all kinds of weirdly generically-named cheeses that are basically cheaper imitations of Parmesan, but they can't describe them as such. There is no longer any generic name for this style of cheese in the English language they're allowed to use.

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Can I splat "Made in America" and an American flag on my crappy Chineese imports? Can I sell "Idaho potatoes" which were grown in Ireland? Can I buy "Florida orange juice" made with Brazillian oranges?

One issue with a EU-US trade deal was that US farmers didn't want to have labelling rules to inform the consumer. Indeed they specifically wanted to remove the option that I, the consumer, had in deciding what to eat. The US government negotiating objectives call for ‘new and enforceable rules to eliminate unjustified trade restrictions or unjustified commercial requirements (including unjustified labeling) that affect new technologies.’

As swindling the consumer the is the M.O. of big business. I'd rather err on the side of the consumer. Naming protections - be it country or region of origin or trademarks in general - do not restrict consumer choice. I can buy "greek style" cheese if I want "feta style" that's not made in Greece.

The EU PDO scheme conflates geographic origin and a particular type of product in a way that is transparently protectionist and silly. When people say "feta cheese" or "american cheese", they're not asking for "made in Feta cheese" or "made in America cheese". They're asking for a particular flavor profile and cooking behavior, and possibly a specific method of manufacture. There is no particular reason why you can't make feta outside of Feta. There is nothing magical about the location in Greece that makes cheese produced in the same way outside of the town inherently inferior. Fuck terroir.

There is no particular reason why you can't make "florida orange juice" outside of florida

If I want to Buy American (tm), or Buy Greek, or whatever, that's my right as a consumer. I have no problem with your dodgy Chinese knockoff being sold, I do have a problem when it pretends to be the genuine article.

Feta is not a region in Greece. Feta is a type of cheese that has the whole of Greece as the terroir. It’s also made with sheep and goat milk and the cow-based cheese that resembles it (white cheese, salad cheese etc) just doesn’t compare taste wise.

With all that said, if you see (in the EU) something being called Feta, you immediately know what it’s made of and that it’s made in Greece.

God, I wish HN had an edit comment button right about now...

Regardless, my argument is not "you should be able to call cow's milk feta cheese", it's "labeling standards should not require a product to be made in a certain place". A strict labeling standard that said "feta has to be made from sheep or goat's milk" is perfectly defensible. One that says "it has to be made in a specific country" isn't.

Hehe

I do agree with you though. As a Greek living abroad, I wouldn’t mind eating Feta that’s made in Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania etc (neighboring countries which share a lot of the culinary/pastoral tradition), as long as I knew that the ingredients and methods are the same. Which is hard to do without strict regulations though, especially outside the EU.

Fun fact: there must be thousands of regional variations of Feta Cheese in Greece. Major supermarkets will carry at least 5-6 brands, and in the cheese section you will get an extra 4-5 varieties. They are all called Feta + place name, and they differ in fat content, water content, acidity, saltiness, tanginess etc. Delicious and sad that most non-Greeks haven’t had a taste of good tasting Feta as the exported varieties are usually pretty meh.

It is about protecting the consumer, because it prevents a million "grana padano <tiny> alike cheese product </tiny>" type products, like you'd get in markets where these rules don't exist.

> It is about protecting the consumer

Nonsense. Protected origin status is protectionism plain and simple. That's not to say whether it's bad or good, just to call it what it is.

Proliferation of confusing low quality lookalikes is prevented by having an enforced criteria and associated labeling requirements. (If the text is too small as in your example then either the labeling requirements aren't sufficient or they aren't being enforced.)

> low quality lookalikes

and if the low quality is really as low quality as claimed, consumer would stop buying it. But if the "low" quality is actually great quality/good value for money, then consumers will buy it - regardless of the naming. Using law to prevent competition is worse for the consumer.

Please don't use "the consumer will stop buying it" type arguments, there are so many examples in real life where you can see trash will absolutely be bought (mostly by people that don't know the world could be not trash). It is a bad faith argument.

> bought (mostly by people that don't know the world could be not trash)

These laws prevent package labeling from informing would-be consumers of the (potentially better) products the imitate. People could know that they have alternatives by requiring imitations to be clearly marked as such. A product clearly labeled as "cheese-style Xheis" suggests that "xheis" is an imitation of "cheese".

If they like their knockoff cheese who cares?

People who don't realise its a knockoff. Both the consumer and the producer loses out. This isn't like copyright and patents, trademarks are there for protection of the consumer as much as the producer

The experience of this forum's users trying to buy electronics from amazon suggests this is not the case.

Why have any protections then? Let the invisible hand of the market rule everything.

> Nonsense. Protected origin status is protectionism plain and simple. That's not to say whether it's bad or good, just to call it what it is.

Such as brands, there's no real difference in intent between a protected origin and a company brand. And I never heard people complaining why they can't distribute their own Coca Cola either, even if it's up to the standards.

In fact the similarities are even stronger when you realise that some protected origins are very small in size and that you have bigger Coke factories than some protected origins.

> Protected origin status is protectionism plain and simple. That's not to say whether it's bad or good, just to call it what it is.

It doesn't really protect anything except the name. Parmesan is protected, my local supermarket sells it right next to cheese that is not called Parmesan. I have yet to be arrested for buying the cheaper one.

If it were merely about preventing deception, your example would be illegal just because of the deliberate de-emphasis on the word "alike". A cheese-buyer with poor eyesight could reasonably look at the packaging and think it was something it wasn't. A different ( more consistent?) typographical design on the same product could be reasonably expected to communicate that it is an imitation product, and what it is an imitation of.

It's about preventing deception, you are clearly wrong about the measures that would be taken because in fact the measures are different. Just because you don't agree with the form enforcement takes doesn't mean that it has to conform with why you think it would take the form that it does.

Pasta cheese?

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