It's not silly.
It's protecting the buyers from frauds.
Parmigiano-Reggiano is made in Emilia Romagna, in the Parma-Reggio (Emilia) area.
That's the only real deal.
Like Champagne which is made only in the Champagne wine region in France.
If it's not from there, it's not the same product.
It might even be better according to personal taste, for example I prefer Franciacorta, which is from Franciacorta region in Lombardy.
But it's not Champagne and can't be named after it.
Can I call my search engine Google and act like I am the real Google?
I guess not...
https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/consortium-specifications...
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.
Good luck competing in any economical sense if you're importing cows from Parma to give them uncontaminated feed from Parma then aging the cheese in an artificial climate like Parma's.
Corners are invariably cut. Do they matter? Maybe, maybe not. But why do you need to name your cheese after a region it's not from? Grana padano's done fine for itself, for example.
To answer the question, of course there is a very strict quality control board
All producers of Parmesan cheese belong to the Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese Consortium), which was founded in 1928. Besides setting and enforcing the standards for the PDO [1], the Consorzio also sponsors marketing activities
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_ori...
Culturally Americans are terrified of finding such things in their food supply, so it's easy to understand why they don't hold these protected designations of origin in high regard, nor are likely to do much to replicate the effects in their domestic versions.
I simply wanted to show the connection between the name Parmigiano Regiano and the area it comes from.
Modena is my goto place when I am travelling to stop eating and I've lived in Bologna for two years, the whole Emilia Romagna is one of my favorite places in Italy.
Also, my father in law lives in Mantua, so, I can say I am a Parmigiano home boy :D
> Parmigiano-Reggiano is made in Emilia Romagna, in the Parma-Reggio (Emilia) area.
> That's the only real deal.
I think this distinction is silly. I don't think the region the product came from matters much. More specifically, I believe certain regions claiming "this is only the real deal if it comes from here" are being chauvinistic, or maybe just trying to protect their local economy.
Champagne is equally silly as Parmigiano-Reggiano. And there are many more similar regional trade-marks. You cannot call your search engine google because of (among other things) trademark law. But this is not a regional trade-mark. Its because you are impersonating a different company.
I actually favor normal trade-marks. They are the most reasonable form of intellectual property.I believe customers need to be protected from products pretending they are from a different company. This allows them to hold the company responsible. It allows them to judge a product by the reputation of the company, and it allows the company to build a reputation. I do not believe customers need to be protected from products claiming to be from a region that 'makes the product special'.
It seems to me that, regional trade marks are not so much about protecting the customer, but instead about protecting the region economy or prestige.
"Do you mean 'Cabernet blend?' "
^ Just as European cheese regulations protect European cheese interests, so do American cheese regulations protect American cheese interests.
While you could make rules that the products need to be at least in the same ballpark as what it says on the label, I imagine that would be quite difficult to enforce. It’s much easier to just go by an established local custom and just declare that to be the real deal.
Can you explain what you mean? This seems like a contradiction... Is branding not trademark? If you're for trademarks, why would someone else be permitted to use their branding?
(Devil's advocate. I'm not actually all for trademarks.)
I do not believe trademarks that protect a region, rather than a company actually have benefit to a customer. Instead it feels to me like these regional trade-marks are ways a government can appease a local community by enshrining in law that they are the 'one true place'. This is benefiting the local community at the cost of anyone else who is capable of delivering the same quality but is now excluded only by virtue of their location.
Or, looking at it more cynically, this is a way for people living on one side of a line to put one over on people living on the other side of the line. They do this by enshrining in law the idea "we are better than the people who do not live here" as if that is a permanent thing. The arrogance, the self-importance, entiteledness and small-mindedness of that really annoy me. Just because your region was the best at a thing at some point in history does not mean that, in perpetuity, other regions will never match your quality.
> This is benefiting the local community at the cost of anyone else who is capable of delivering the same quality but is now excluded only by virtue of their location.
No it's not, people can make better stuff and put their own brand on it... Nobody excluded from making better parmesean, only from lying that it's from that region when it's not...
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.