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At Your Leisure - 20 March 2006

Cheesed Off

Introduction

Fancy a sandwich at lunchtime? Do you like that Greek cheese, what's it called? Feta, that's right! The deli's doing a feta and black olive ciabatta for £2.50. Pick me one up when you get yours, eh?

The trendiness and availability of 'exotic' foods is one of the hallmarks of our changing lifestyles and tastes in an era of globalised markets. Breads from Italy, spreads from Greece, fruits from South America, yoghurt drinks from the Middle East - they're all options to choose from nowadays.

Looks tasty, doesn't it? But is it the real thing? Proper feta cheese can only come from Greece. Source: Wikimedia Commons, under the GNUDFL licence.

But can you be sure the food is actually from the country it suggests? Producers and their marketing teams have tried for years to sell us food that appears to be exotic, only for consumers to find that the stuff's actually from a factory in northern England or somewhere not especially foreign. But for some foodstuffs, there is an ongoing battle to protect the name given to products, and countries are prepared to fight it out in court if necessary. This At Your Leisure looks at the case of Feta cheese and a very European battle.

The Better Feta?

In recent years, the fight over the right to call a certain tangy, crumbly cheese 'feta' has come to symbolise a battle over product branding. Some countries have argued that feta is a generic food name: in other words, the name represents a type of cheese which could be produced anywhere. But Greece has won from the European Union the right to protect the use of the name 'feta' to describe this type of cheese only when it has been made in specific Greek regions.

This is known as 'Protected Designation of Origin' (PDO) and it has sparked a legal wrangle which has taken up court time for the past 20 years. At the heart of the battle is this question: do countries like Germany, Denmark and France have the right to use the name 'feta' to describe a feta-like cheese they produce?

Greece argued that they do not, saying that only the Greek-made product should be able to be called feta. The Greeks stress that this crumbly tangy cheese has been made in Greece from sheep's milk for the past 6,000 years. In their view, the cheese's name is synonymous with the area in which it is made. The EU has agreed and signalled the end to the right of other countries to use the name on their feta-like cheeses.

The problem is that in the past century, Danish, French and German producers have built up quite a large business making this foodstuff. They have used the name as a generic title indicating the type of cheese they sell. The Greek authorities have been trying to prevent them doing so for years.

So what can be regarded as a generic name for a food or drink and which products should be protected as originating in a specific location or country?

• Should Brussels sprouts come from Belgium?
• Can Newcastle Brown Ale be made in southern England?
• Does Yorkshire pudding always come from Yorkshire?
• What about Arbroath smokies?
• And Cornish clotted cream?
• Can Cheddar cheese from Ireland be called Irish Cheddar?

What do you think? We'll give the answers later.

A piece of stilton and a glass of port - the height of civilisation! But does it matter where they come from? Image sources: both from Wikimedia Commons, under the GNUDFL licence.

EU Protection

The EU has adopted a system to identify specific protected foods and drinks. PDO status gives an EU member state the unique right to stop other producers imitating a specific product. It therefore sets the product up as a quality item, allowing it to be marketed as a premium product - meaning that it will command a premium price.

The EU began the PDO system in order to protect certain foods and maintain their authenticity. The system ran into controversy when other countries in the EU and outside the trading bloc complained that it prevented lawful competition. The problem is that in other countries, especially outside the EU, certain European products are used as generic names for whole groups of foods or drinks.

In the EU, you would soon run into legal action if you called a fortified wine 'port' or 'sherry' if it wasn't from a specific region of Portugal or Spain. But in other parts of the world these names are commonly used in ways that their original European producers resent. The PDO system works within the EU, but what protection can traditional food producers rely on outside their domestic markets?

WTO Protection

The World Trade Organisation has set up a system of Trade Related International Property Rights (TRIPs) to meet this need. Under TRIPs, certain products are protected as a result of their Geographical Indicators (GIs). GIs are defined as follows:

Source: WTO Agreement on TRIPs. (http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm3b_e.htm)

If this wine has PDO status, its producer may be able to charge a premium price. © iStock.com

The important words here are 'quality' and 'reputation'. By identifying your product as being of a recognised and protected quality and reputation, you can prevent other makers of similar products from making cheaper versions. This protection allows mainly EU based producers of certain foods and drinks to limit the supply of their products and charge higher prices. Understandably, producers in other countries are pretty 'cheesed off' with these arrangements.

Countries producing imitation products, such as Danish, French or German feta cheese, have problems if their producers are prevented from calling their products by the protected name. They will lose out financially, as they will have to change the name of their version of the product. They will also have to change the marketing of the cheese, including its branding, packaging and advertising. The EU noted that many producers of feta-like cheese in other countries have used symbols and colours in their packaging and marketing that suggest an association with Greece.

This will have to end by 2007. The PDO status granted to Greek feta was effective from 2002. At that point, producers in other countries had five years to change their products, avoiding any mention of the words 'feta' or 'Greek'. The clock is still ticking for these producers.

Conclusion

So what next? Can we expect PDO status to be granted to all foods and drinks that have some association with an area or country? Will the name 'pizza' only be allowed to be used when the food is made in Italy? What about spaghetti bolognese? Will this have to be made exclusively in Bologna, and goulash in Hungary? Unlikely, but many countries and producers will be keeping an eye on developments at EU and WTO level to find out.

And what about the answers to the list of products mentioned earlier? Here's the list of what's protected and what's not:

• Should Brussels sprouts come from Belgium? No
• Can Newcastle Brown Ale be made in southern England? No, it must come from Newcastle.
• Does Yorkshire pudding always come from Yorkshire? No.
• What about Arbroath smokies? Yes.
• And Cornish clotted cream? Yes
• Can Cheddar cheese from Ireland use the name 'cheddar'? Yes. Cheddar does not have PDO status, but West Country farmhouse cheddar does.

Sources of further information

• PDO and PGI The EU's lists of PDO protected products.
• EU Court Ruling Protects Greek Feta - NPR Radio programme, with debate from Danish and Greek contributors.
• The Feta cheese wars - information page
• The EU Feta debate concludes - from Managing Intellectual Property
• Is bologna bologna if it's not from Bologna? - from Brand Channel.com
• Greece hails 'historic' EU ruling on its staple feta cheese - An EU business article