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Comment by andreareina | Hacker News Reader

Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can already be selling "jamón ibérico" because the USA does not in general recognize protected origins (viz. the sawdust that gets sold as "parmesan" over there)---there's no integrity to protect. In places that recognize protected origin using the same pigs wouldn't allow you to sell under the name jamón ibérico anyway. So blame the feckless governments that think names should only be protected when it suits them.

Trademarks on food are fine. Trying to copyright an animal is... I really don't have the words.

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> Trying to copyright an animal is...

They're not.

From the article "must come from Iberian blackfoot pigs that spend the last months of their lives eating acorns on the dehesa, a traditional Spanish or Portuguese pasture shaded by mature oak trees"

It's all of those conditions required. I'm not making any judgements, just pointing out.

Unsolicited suggestion for those who have recently vested: California certainly has plenty of land suitable for operating a dehesa...

("Remember, it's only tear gas if it comes from the Gazeuse Region of France and bears the CS label. Otherwise you're only being treated to sparkling mass repression at the hands of the State.")

Pigs can eat acorns, lots of other mammals can't without pre-treatment. I know Texas and Georgia have a feral pig problem, which would indicate a biome that can support them...I don't recall CA having a similar pig issue; but maybe they haven't gotten there yet.

Help help, I'm being repressed.

Can confirm, CA oak woodlands have a feral pig issue. They're quite destructive and tear up my property certain times of year, digging for grubs. Folks hunt them here (about an hour north of SF, west of Davis). The meat is pretty dry.

> He is furious with the failure of the Spanish government to protect jamón’s integrity and allow native blackfoot pigs to be exported to the United States.

> Martínez rejects the argument that, as a variety, the blackfoot pig can’t be protected by a denomination the way champagne and parmesan cheese are, pointing out that the Japanese wagyu enjoys just this sort of protection.

They are trying to set limits on where the pig is allowed to be brought. Not "the pigs must be from so-and-so region to be Iberian blackfoot pigs", but "Iberian blackfoot pigs must not be allowed to be exported [from Iberia I suppose?]". I'd say that copyright and software licenses are an apt metaphor for what they're trying to do.

No the best metaphor is trademark. When you buy an Apple product, you don't expect some cheap Chinese rip off inside of a package with an Apple logo. Same here, except that the trademark doesn't belong to a corporation.

Quoting myself: Trademarks on food are fine. That matches onto parmesan, champagne, etc. I'm all for it. That has nothing to do with restricting the export of the pigs. Protect the name, sure. Don't let them call it jamón ibérico armericano [sic]. But let them have the pigs and see what they can do with it.

But then again, they (spanish) have no problem buying around 90% of the portuguese production of purebred black iberian pigs, undercutting local producers and then calling it their own.

I couldn't find figures, but remember from talks from producers that around 30-40% of Spanish Iberian Ham is actually from portuguese pigs raised in alentejo (the 90% figure above can be found in export reports, the 30-40% is hearsay from talking and negotiating with the producers a few years ago)

I’m Spanish and didn’t know this. Thanks for mentioning it.

Hey, no problem. I might even be wrong in those values, but were the ones I found.

4-5 years ago I was working with a lot of breeders here, and they all complained that the 'low' development work was done by them, but the 'high' product as the smoked/dried hams were from spanish producers.

Portugal always had this issue where we can 'produce' the lower chain stuff, but getting into the higher chain marketplace has been an issue. It is a shame really.

But having said that, I lived in the south of Spain (andalucia) for a while, and I love you guys. Even if you pretend you don't understand us :P, it was some of the most fun and happy times I had.

The US does recognize certain protected origin products, just like the EU does. The lists of items aren't the same though. "Parmesan" cheese is not protected in the US but "Parmigiano-Reggiano" is.

Parmesan didn't used to be protected over here either - only Parmigiano-Reggiano was. The trouble is that most people didn't actually care about whether the parmesan they tossed in their cooking was the expensive, geographically-controlled stuff or some cheaper local imitation. So cheese producers went on a legal battle to leverage their control over the Parmigiano-Reggiano name into a monopoly on parmesan itself, one which they succeeded in with the help of some political favours from the European Commission, and now there's no legally-usable generic name for this style of cheese in the EU. This whole thing was, of course, intensely political.

How do you explain Champagne then?

It was not protected in the US until the US/EC Wine Trade Agreement was signed in 2006.

Basically counterfeit Champagne :D

I did say "in general". Champagne is a recent thing. Parmesan still isn't (Parmiggiano-Reggiano is, but come on that's like saying Köln is different from Cologne). In Napa Valley we bought a case of "port". It was good stuff and I'd buy it again, but it's not port anymore than a Pixel is an iPhone.

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