Initial reaction : cool! Subsequently: I am going to stop buying this stuff. I dont care about protecting the cartel, and want to punish them for this sort of behavior.
This "cartel" does not care about others making same cheese even using the same recipe, they just care about protecting the name. For example Kraft sells their own version of parmesan in EU without any problems, they just call it "Pamesello"
In other words, it's not a patent, it's a trademark. Those are much more acceptable IMHO, and are often good.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2012/11/19/the-dar...
If we had DOPs from the outset, we'd have a huge number of extra names for the non-regional versions of foods.
Additionally, Italian regulatory bodies are well known for not giving a shit about the products that are exported from Italy, so getting the certified "real thing" isn't a good indicator that, for example, your olive oil is even real olive oil.
https://european-accreditation.org
Olive oil is just vegetable oil made out of olives, but if "Lakonia olive oil" is registered as a PDO then it could only be made in the Greek region of Lakonia using local olives. Olive oil adulterated with other vegetable oils shouldn't be called "olive oil" in the first place. Some "Italian" olive oils are actually from Spain or a mix due to more competitive prices from Spain and EU subsidies. Btw, 2023 is a disastrous year for olive oil producers in Spain because of the spring heatwave which affected the flowering. It's so bad that there was a heist last week involving two tank trailers containing 500 hl worth of Spanish olive oil ready for bottling, totaling €0.5M.
What is wrong with relying on the trademark for such a body's seal of approval, rather than constructing what is essentially a trademark on the name of a product, which is already firmly part of the commons?
Why do you need to prohibit others from using the name Parmesan, when consumers can look for the seal (if the body is trustworthy)?
> Olive oil is just...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the...
Salient bit:
> Even the labels bearing the coveted "Protected Designation of Origin" or PDO stamp indicating the precise geographical origin of a particular extra virgin olive oil to ensure the quality of that region’s agricultural products, and which are subjected to more strict controls, have not escaped the illegal trend.
If the government-sanctioned group that gets to essentially trademark terms hundreds of years old (and take them out of the commons) can't do a good job ensuring that the product isn't adulterated, maybe it would be better if these were industry-established groups that could compete with each other to establish a reputation of reliability.
People are prohibited from using the name "Parmigiano Reggiano," which for centuries was not a general term, but the name of the specific regional cheese.
What tends to happen is that a name that gets famous for some high-quality regional food is then used by someone else making a lower-quality food that's cheaper to produce, which does mislead consumers. This is exactly the sort of thing trademarks are for.
A great book on all this is Real Food, Fake Food.
> Within the European Union, the term "Parmesan" may be used, by law, to refer only to Parmigiano Reggiano itself, which must be made in a restricted geographic area, using stringently defined methods.
See also champagne vs. méthode champenoise vs. méthode vs. méthode traditionnelle. In the EU you can't even use the second option anymore. In California, it was initially referred to by the first option, then the second, and now a mix of the second and the third.
I don't think this is helping consumers at all. If they want champagne from the Champagne region of France, they can tell immediately from the label.
I'm personally all for it, fuck the waste they sell in the US such as wood pulp with cheese flavoring sold as Parmesan.
The Parmesan they make in Wisconsin is closer to the cheese they made in Parma a hundred years ago than today’s Parmiggiano Reggiano [1].
Italy went through in a decade, after WWII, the wealth expansion Britain did over a century in its Industrial Revolution. A lot of “classic” Italian culture is carryover from America, e.g. carbonara, or modern mythology.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6ac009d5-dbfd-4a86-839e-28bb44b2b...
The quality Wisconsin Parmesan's are usually very very good, served in wheels or chunks like quality Reggiano (though as you mention a slightly different cheese to Parmiggiano Reggiano) and I don't know of anyone, Italian or otherwise that would describe them as 'wood pulp with cheese flavoring'.