There is reason to expect this if you want some expectation of eating what you're being sold. It's an extension of reasonable labelling.

It's interesting you pick out cheddar. Consider Cheddar cheese - much of it was so direly awful as barely meeting requirement to be called edible let alone cheddar. Labelling your cheese "cheddar" should give me some expectation of production process (it can't be cheddar if it's not been cheddared or aged) taste and texture just as labelling Fire Engine Red paint gives me expectation of colour inside the tin. Would it be stupid protectionism to be disatisfied that I received pale pink paint in the tin?

Fortunately there's an EU PDO protection for Cheddar - "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar", so this is what I now usually buy. It requires a minimum aging of nine months and that the milk come from the same farm producing the cheese. It's a dramatically better product.

No it's not just protectionism. If I buy Bleu d'Auvergne (it's a French cheese) in the Netherlands, I want to be sure I get the real deal, as a consumer.

exactly. the laws protect the customers from scam low quality product equivalents.

margarine is never labeled 'tastes like butter' here. same with Grana Padano. Sure everyone has the ability to produce knock off Parmesan. But when I want the real thing I know I'll get it.

But what if someone outside France is able to produce equivalent cheese using the same formula? Why do you care where it's from?

In this particular case, as with the Champagne example, the name of the product indicates its origin. Bleu d'Auvergne means "Blue from Auvergne" (a region in France), where blue is short for "blue cheese".

If someone outside of France (Auvergne, more specifically) can concoct a product with similar quality, let them label and market it under their own name.

If you fork an open source project, wouldn't it be convenient to come up with a new name for your project?

But presumably there is more than one brand of Blue d'Avergne? I'm not suggesting one should be able to steal the trademarks of any of those brands.

And if someone from a different place makes a product that is compositionally identical then probably their ability to market it will depend on the customer's recognition that it is exactly the same thing.

You're confusing brand/trademark with origin labelling. A farmers market will inevitably have multiple cheeses created by different producers, all of which may be labelled "Blue d'Avergne".

Yeah, brands do happen, I bought a cheese labelled "Blue style cheese" the other day because it was cheaper and may have been made in Poland to the same process.

Blue d'Avergne is the brand. There may be more than one producer that follows the established rules for the brand.

If you take for instance "Champagne" - you might have an equivalent product but it's not "Champagne" unless it comes from the Champagne region of France. Yet alternative sparkling whites such as "Prosecco" (Italy), "Cava" (Spain) and "Cristal" (US) seem to do quite well. If you have a good enough product, you shouldn't have any need to claim equivalence with another regional variety.

True. I think that Cristal is champagne though, at least the one I know of. Is there a local Cristal in the US?

The same reason you cannot use someone else trademark even if you use the same formula. Origin guarantees are just collective trademarks for small producers.

Moreover quality of the product is not always the only reason to buy a product (see fair trade, organic product, religious belief ...)

They can label it as made the same way. They can do comparative marketing - 'we use the same techniques but better ingredients, our product is better'.

What they can't do is pretend their product is the actual traditional product from some other geographical location.

There seems like no possible way that can be detrimental to consumers?

Much of the taste of food comes from inputs.

Even the water can make a significant difference. The animals producing the meat will influence taste depending on their life and what they're eating. It's reasonable that a regional product will turn out markedly different to the same recipe in a completely different environment.

It's reasonable to want the product as intended, not what it becomes after a series of shortcuts and cost savings to produce ostensibly the "same" product.

It's only heavily industrialised foods where this starts not to matter, mainly as it becomes so disntaced from those inputs.

Cheese is actually a tricky example. Cheeses produced outside of their origin geo tend to have somewhat different microbiomes and, therefore, somewhat different tastes and other characteristics. See, for example, this episode of Gastropod: https://gastropod.com/say-cheese-2/

I'm by no means an extremist on the topic. I think it would be pretty silly at this point to say that only Cheddar from Cheddar, England could be labeled as such. But origin naming rules aren't silly either.

Food is not like building a car in a factory. It's not a formula like chemistry.

The milk matter, cereal matter, where cow live matter. The whole supply chain. it's really difficult/impossibile to replicate that.

You can have something similar, but call it with the generic name.

In Italy you can get really good food everywhere. But i can assure you, you can feel the difference between location. For that we get DOC, DOP to certify location, tradition, etc.

It can get even more subtle than that. Speaking with a restaurant owner in a tiny village on the Pyrenees, I told him he would make a killing if he opened in a restaurant in Barcelona.

"It wouldn't work. The animals would have to be transported. They would sweat and that affects the taste".

Can only speak for myself, but as there is no really objective way to measure that kind of equivalence, we as consumers are left with the rather blunt tools of traditions and establishing brands when it comes to food. Some of the product types which are protected are several hundred years old, predating all trademark laws which would otherwise have had a similar effect.

There are also some products in EU which are sold as '<something something> style <fooditem> because of the reason you state, but with that said: They rarely reach the quality of the 'real deal'. Apparently it is not very easy to create similar quality products?

That someone can call it the same - Cheese just like France but produced somewhere.

It is about representing the right information.

The thing is, that's impossible. If you try to make Comté in the US, it would not taste the same and thus would be a scam.

It's a way of effectively implementing trademarks for geographically based industries that predate IP law.

You're not opposed to trademarks, are you? (I don't see how any rational consumer could be, otherwise it's a free-for-all with fraud and fakes.) It's exactly the same thing, except for traditional industry.

People are free to call their new products whatever they like, as long as they don't take one that's already taken. They should compete on their merits, not freeloading on the goodwill established by an existing brand (i.e. geographical area with specific standards of production etc.)

I don't see it as stupid at all! To me, Greek Yoghurt has to come from greece, that's what I expect as a customer. Any non-Greek Greek yoghurt is simply labeled as "Greek-style Yoghurt" and that's easy enough, when I go to the shop I know exactly what I'm getting.

That's a interesting example – I totally agree with you in the general case, but I'd actually always thought of 'Greek yoghurt' the same way I thought of 'French fries'!

What would be an example of food that conforms to the "general case"?

Champagne. Parma ham. Balsamic vinegar from Modena. Cornish Yarg.

I'm not sure exactly why I've never thought of Greek yoghurt in the same way!

> To me, Greek Yoghurt has to come from greece, that's what I expect as a customer.

Why do you expect that? It can't be based on the name, since virtually all foods with an origin name were not actually made there. I'm pretty sure you don't expect Cheddar cheese to have come from Cheddar? Would you accept ordinary yoghurt that was imported from Greece being sold as "Greek Yoghurt"?

If I imported Camembert cheese from Cheddar, it would still be Camembert. If I imported Cheddar cheese from Hong Kong, it would be Cheddar. French toast sold at a Denny's in New Mexico was made in New Mexico, not France. Peking duck is duck prepared in a style characteristic of Peking, not any duck prepared in whatever style but sold in Peking. And Greek yoghurt is yoghurt prepared in a style characteristic of a Greek company that decided to sell thickened, sweetened yoghurt.

in many, many cases quality of original vs copy is really not the same, cheeses which require very long and specific processes to mature are a good example (ie I've yet to taste Gruyere that would be equal to original Swiss one with AOC stamp, French copies are pretty bland in comparison and not cheaper either). Same can go for virtually any type of food. And yes I would prefer original cheddar compared to some done by some john doe in next town 'following original recipes' and I would vote with my wallet for it.

it might be a strange concept for non-europeans, but for us, this is one of the best things that came from EU integration. if I buy a copy, I want to know it's a copy and not original. simple as that.

And if I buy "Napa Valley wine", it can come from Chile, right?

You can expect that because EU regulation requires it to be that way.

If that's the reason you expect it, the regulation is the sole justification for its own existence. I feel quite comfortable calling that "stupid".

It isn't a case of there being regulation for the sake of it, but rather that the regulation has come into existence off the back of decades of what customers have expected from their produce.

This is not about protectionism for producers, rather the protection of consumers. Noone is telling the consumers what to buy, merely telling them what they can expect when they buy.

To take the example of wine, consumers of Bordeaux wines have accepted that since the classification of growths in 1855 there is a formalised structure and hierarchy of producers. One can know that wine from a First growth will be superior in quality to a lesser growth. From looking at the wine label, a customer immediately can tell that the wine will be of a certain quality without having to take a gamble. Codifying this into EU law allows no other winemaker within the EU to produce a wine with a label that claims the wine is a First Growth Bordeaux. This is great for consumers.

The EU is not protecting producers in that anyone can make wine to compete with these Bordeaux wines but cannot 'piggyback' off of the 'brand' (for want of a better word) that Bordeaux has built for its producers.

Now matter how much you may want to get an authentic product, you can't expect to get it without regulation. As the article shows very well. Therefore the reason for the regulation can't be the expectation itself.

The reason for that regulation is a combination of protectionism on one side and a desire to be well informed about the products you're eating.

It's just trademarks. We o Have them on Coca Cola, why not Champagne?