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peoplefromibiza

> is silly protectionism

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...

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> 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.

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.

Actually it’s made in Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, part of Bologna and part of Mantua.

Yes, of course, sorry for not being precise, I apologize!

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

Is there a quality control board, or does making the product in the area confer magical powers to the product?

To get a DPO registration you must show both historical ties to the region and a specific regional method. There is a quality control board. Probably some of it is puffery; some of it is quite precise.

https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/consortium-specifications...

Ok, so why does the region matter, iff you follow the same method and live up to the same quality standards?

> iff you follow the same method

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.

It's up to the buyers to say whether it matters and they say it does.

The buyers did not decide to give this regional trade-mark. That was some government somewhere. The buyers tend to follow that. And perhaps the buyers only value the "stringent quality check" of the mark, and do not care for the "region check" but they have no alternatives.

>perhaps the buyers only value the "stringent quality check" of the mark, and do not care for the "region check"

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.

Well, it's hard to imagine that such a flagship monument to the made in Italy comes to existence thanks to magical powers.

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...

Biotechnology, not magic. Different places have their own unique populations of mould, bacteria and mites that get into the cheese, which greatly affects the taste and texture.

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.

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