Nation & world Briefing
Europe upset
at food names
Tosin Sulaiman
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
WASHINGTON — There’s a
global food fight coming.
European food producers want
the rest of the world to stop selling
cheese labeled Parmesan unless it
comes from Parma, Italy. They in
sist that only Pilsener beer brewed
in the Czech Republic carry that
description. They say bologna
must hail from the Italian city of
Bologna to be worthy of the name.
For U.S. food makers, who for
years have traded on the fame of
the world’s most celebrated re
gional fare when naming their
products, it’s a real problem.
The United States already pro
tects some products with roots in
specific European regions — for
example, cognac must come from
France — but the Europeans now
want this protection extended to
hundreds of food products ranging
from Greek feta cheese to tradi
tionally produced balsamic vine
gar from Italy’s Modena and Reg
gio Emilia provinces. Under one
proposal, food inspectors from
Italy might inspect America’s
50,000 Italian restaurants to en
sure that they use authentic ingre
dients and methods.
The World Trade Organization,
which sets rules for international
commerce, plans formal talks on
the issue at its ministerial meeting
in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
Some observers believe that the
Europeans will end up trading
their determination to protect re
gional food specialties for, say, U.S.
tolerance of their subsidies to do
mestic moviemakers. Others say
the Europeans are in no mood to
compromise with Americans.
Europeans have yet to issue a list
of U.S. products to which they ob
ject, but the prospect has U.S. com
panies nervously contemplating the
cost of renaming products that
Americans have adopted as their
own — and rebuilding those prod
ucts’ reputations from scratch.
As Ralph Ichter, president of
EuroGonsultants Inc., candidly
put it, if the Europeans succeed,
“U.S. companies would be
screwed.” EuroGonsultants repre
sents French wine and spirits ex
porters on trade issues.
European legislation provides
protection for up to 600 food prod
ucts that are historically linked to
a particular location, known as
Geographical Indications. The new
effort seeks to end what the Euro
pean Community contends is the
fraud caused when foreign compa
nies hijack indigenous names and
their well-earned reputations.
U.S. companies counter that
terms such as Black Forest ham
and linguica sausage have become
widely used and generic since
they were brought over by
German and Portuguese immi
grants, respectively.
“These are things we started
producing when we first got here,”
said Sarah Thorn, director of in
ternational trade at the Grocery
Manufacturers of America.
Francesco Forte of the commer
cial office at the Italian Embassy
said he believes that U.S. compa
nies using Italian names are “try
ing to exploit the reputation of the
Italian product to sell theirs.”
Forte claims that as well as con
fusing consumers, this food for
gery harms Italian exports by re
ducing the market share of Italian
products and threatening their
good names. “If people aren’t sat
isfied with them, they’ll think
they’re from Italy,” he protested.
The experience of the Danes is
the U.S. producers’ nightmare.
Last year, the European Union
prohibited non-Greek cheese pro
ducers from using the term feta, a
decision that Denmark, the
world’s leading producer of feta,
is challenging.
According to Eleanor Meltzer of
the U.S. Commerce Department’s
Patent and Trademark Office, if
American-made products such as
Parmesan were to suffer a similar
fate, consumers as well as manu
facturers would lose. Companies
would “lose their market share.
You or I wouldn’t know what they
were selling. They would have to
re-label their products and edu
cate us.”
Italian-made Parmesan, Thorn
said, “would cost three times as
much as what you’re used to. That
wouldn’t help consumers.”
© 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune
Information Services.
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