How do you propose should products from their original regions be marked? "Parmesan from Parma"? "Black Forset Ham from the Black Forest"?
A compromise I could get behind would be limiting the use of the products' name in the native language of their area of origin to the originals and forbidding false and misleading advertising (as in the feta example from the article).
Ninjaedit: Cow milk vs sheep milk makes a hell of a difference. Those would be completely different products.
Actually yes, I would totally have something like a Schwartzwalder Ham with a 'Made in Schwartzwald' disclaimer on it for people who want it to be authentic. Hell, think of Cheddar - the most popular cheese there is - and tell me, how many of Cheddar cheeses are made in actual Cheddar, Somerset?
People who want quality will know what to look for, and either way the price tag will reflect the difference between the real deal and the knockoff. I am 100% fine with regulation of what the product has to BE, for example if I bought a feta and found out it's a yellow cheese some incredibly oblivious person misnamed (obviously silly and extreme case), I would be pissed off.
E:
Something isn't special just because it was made in a very specific place.
Wine drinkers will disagree.
True, but then again, it's not about the
place per se, but about the climate and geography. If someone made a controlled environment exactly replicating the conditions that are currently in some random vineyard in France at the same time, you could grow a grape with exact same parameters and process it to a wine that tastes the same (within the variance between bottles from the original vineyard).