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[scrdest]

How about all these?

These are just recipes. It's not just about place names, like in Wiener Schnitzel (a schnitzel prepared in the Viennese way), but place of origin, like Champagne is made out of certain grapes in Champagne.

But you could take those grapes and make Champagne somewhere else, then, couldn't you?

[GlyphGryph]

But you could take those grapes and make Champagne somewhere else, then, couldn't you?

Not in Europe, you can't!

[LeoLeonardoIII]

A cheese is just a recipe.

Take a cow from Parma, and a guy from Parma, and whatever else he needs to make cheese, and put him on a boat floating in the Pacific Ocean, and his cheese won't be Parmesan according to the EU.

Take an American who knows nothing about cheese, send him to Parma on a cheese internship, let him fuck up the cheese factory all day, and the little squirt of solid milk that comes out the next day will be Parmesan according to the EU.

Let a company send expert cheesemakers to Parma to learn how to make it, exactly what tools to use, get a sample of whatever bacteria they use, and set up a factory in a climate similar to Parma in the US. Have that factory produce a cheese that is indistinguishable from the cheese made in a Parma factory. The EU will not call that Parmesan.

Same thing goes for grapes - the French do not have a good point.

[Darvi]

As long as it looks like champagne, tastes like champagne, and behaves like champagne, I see no harm in it being called champagne.

If it, however, looks, tastes, and behaves like a piece of plastic, why are you calling it cheese?

[/sincerity]

[nenjin]

On the one hand, I don't disagree with this. Manufacturing standards between the US and Europe are very different in some products. Americans use products in beer production are illegal in Germany.

Likewise, this kind of thinking already exists when it comes to liquor. Scotch is only made in Scotland, ect...

So I can sympathize with Europeans' desire to protect their product and regional identity.

On the other, a) people in Europe already make inferior quality items under the same name. Regionality isn't a guarantee of quality. And b) this is a shameless attempt to protect their bottomline against inferior alternatives. Also, to essentially trademark a region, which doesn't jive with American Trademark law. You can't trademark "Boston Cream Pie" here in America, because you don't own Boston.

So I dunno. Seems like the same shit that's been discussed before: Europe wants to protect its artisans, the rest of the world doesn't really care what they want. In the end, price sorts all this out. Only people with money to burn are going to pay the premium on European imports. Everyone else will just buy whatever is available, whether it's called Feta or "Cube cheese that smells like ass."

[GlyphGryph]

And b) this is a shameless attempt to protect their bottomline against inferior superior alternatives.

I've made a correction that I think is more likely to get to the true heart of the matter.

[scrdest]

Correction: European POLITICIANS want that. I, born and living in Europe, and likely a fuckton of other people, don't give a flying fuck.

[nenjin]

On the other, a) people in Europe already make inferior quality items under the same name. Regionality isn't a guarantee of quality. And b) this is a shameless attempt to protect their bottomline against inferior superior alternatives.

I've made a correction that I think is more likely to get to the true heart of the matter.

There's no accounting for taste. Which I think is the heart of the matter.

[Foamybeard]

That's actually a probleatic thing in case of reginal products.
If i have a tasty product like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscypek and want to esport it into the US the last thing i want is americans making cheap knockoffs that tase off smell off and are likely to make people unintrested in my product after eating a knockoff that pretends being the REAL DEAL.

Of course my example is a lesser known product but you probably get the idea.
I just guess someone registered Feta Mozzarella ETC. as regional products and they are now "protected" by EU law.

Just because you can make something doesn't mean people will buy it. If people prefer the version that 'smells off, and tastes off', then well, you are shit out of luck, buddy.

[GlyphGryph]

It's not really a matter of accounting for taste, I just don't think people generally push so hard for protections against products that aren't superior in some way. If their product was already preferred, they wouldn't need the protections.

Protectionism is almost always used against products that offer a higher value (pretty much the essence of being superior when talking of products).

Maybe this is a better way to say it:
If they were worried about inferior products, they'd pass quality laws.
What they are worried about is competing products, regardless of quality, that might hurt their bottom lines.

[Zangi]

Well, I can understand why the French wants this.  It is in part a foodie and culinary pride thing... and also, the same types of products being made in the same country can taste different for all sorts of reason.

For example wine: What sort of wooden caskets they store the wine in can make a difference in taste.  Like region one has oak trees while region two has maple trees.  So region one would have oak caskets to store their wine in and similar for region two.
Maybe even the climate can change the taste a bit.

There is also the contention that companies making the products of the same name probably do not adhere to the same 'quality standards' that are in place at its original origin.  If any.

So yea, in this day and age, people can copy the 'style' and maybe even artificially create the same conditions... mass produce it for profits.
You don't need to be an Italian to make Italian style food, at least in my opinion.  Its the training and to a lesser extent, ingredients that determines the quality and authenticity of the food, not the ethnicity of the person.

In short: EU asks US to tell its corporations to stop using product names that originally came from them.  Insert stuff about culture and heritage.  US citizens don't really gives a rat's arse about the heritage/cultural aspect of it.  US corporations don't want to rebrand, cause don't fix what ain't broken.

[misko27]

A better way of phrasing it is that inauthentic ethnic cuisine is as American as Baseball.

Or that it's pure protectionism, but that's less interesting to say.

[nenjin]

If they were worried about inferior products, they'd pass quality laws.

They have. Stringently. In their own countries. But they can't protect the iconic name that goes along with it, and American companies are more than happy to borrow that brand recognition for their own purposes than to try their own brand name, which is automatically at a disadvantage.

Also worth noting that these are regional economies that have a long, long pedigree. They represent what these people do, and have done, for decades. It's not like Detroit where cars used to get made, or Florida Orange Juice. It's a thing that was only made in one place in the past, gained worldwide notoriety because of it and forms the basis of the region's economy.

I'm not saying it's not protectionism, like when Adobe asked people to stop using Photoshop as a verb, or when Kleenex asked people to call it "tissues" instead of referring to all tissues as Kleenex.

But those are pure branding issues. This is actually a production issue and Americans lead in making mass amounts of stuff with the cheapest possible ingredients. So while their position isn't wholly tenable, it's not untenable either.

[GlyphGryph]

No, I'm saying the Us already has quality laws for a variety of products, and I could understand them pushing for quality laws.

They aren't pushing for the US to institute quality laws, they are pushing for their monopoly rights to extend to the US, and there is pretty much no evidence that "quality concerns" are even a consideration here.

From those I've talked to, the French don't think American wine tastes worse, they think it is "inferior" solely because it does not come from France. That... isn't a quality issue being discussed, there.

Well, I can understand why the French wants this.  It is in part a foodie and culinary pride thing... and also, the same types of products being made in the same country can taste different for all sorts of reason.

For example wine: What sort of wooden caskets they store the wine in can make a difference in taste.  Like region one has oak trees while region two has maple trees.  So region one would have oak caskets to store their wine in and similar for region two.
Maybe even the climate can change the taste a bit.

Except that even professional wine tasters are only able to recognize known year/region combinations. When presented with a new batch of wine, they can't tell where it came from with any degree of accuracy, from what I've read. (And there are an incredibly small number of people who can even do that)

Some California champagnes taste more like some French champagnes than other French champagnes do, guaranteed.

[10ebbor10]

Yeah, I don't know about the Cheese thing, but for wines there're very stringent quality controls. If you're mumbling about you probably won't get the label.