Pizza is a dish with limited lifetime. It wouldn't be practible to link it to a location. And is there anything specific about the different styles that linkes them to the location?

With ingredients you have the specific local conditions, namely the plants, animals, soil, weather, which all influence the outcome. Additionally there is also the local knowledge, traditions and laws which influence the endresult.

And finally we also have the reason where there are patents, copyrights and trademarks in the first place. People invest time and money to bring a product to fame, and it's kinda unfair and sometimes even harmful if you allow anyone to just highjack the success and sell your own inferiour product under their fame.

> There are similar 'feta-style' cheese found in many other places:

Indeed, but similar is not the same.

A negative example in that regard would be wasabi. The original japanese wasabi is hardly available outside of japan. Yet most people believe that the fake-wasabi is the real thing and that they experience the authentic taste of japanese dishes (mostly sushi).

"Pizza is a dish with limited lifetime. It wouldn't be practible to link it to a location."

And yet it has been so linked; there is a PDO designation for Pizza Napoli. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:...

You can make these pizzas anywhere you like; but you have to use proper mozzarella, and rather special tomatoes. I have not found a way of making a good Pizza Napoletana using tomatoes that are not San Marzano. I'm sure it's possible to make decent mozzarella outside of Italy; but nobody seems to be doing it - Danish mozzarella is a nasty, rubbery fake.

We (consumers) need proper labelling, backed by law. Without that, you get a slide to the bottom. Labelling for origin is part of that.

Hey, if you don't care about the geographical origin, ignore the label and buy Danish mozzarella, or generic tinned tomatoes. It's cheaper. But if you do care, and accurate labelling isn't enforced by law, then you are deprived of choice. Without choice, there's no efficient market.

> Beside the physical location, what 'technical differences' are there between feta made in Greece versus Australia?

It's telling that you ask, because it means you don't know, but Greek feta is made with sheep's milk, optionally with up to 30% goat's milk, while cheese called "feta" made outside of Greece is almost always made with cow's milk. Greek feta has a characteristic piquant taste imparted to it by sheep and goat milk lipases, while cow's milk "feta" cheeses made outside Greece, do not.

Cheese made with sheep's milk has very different orgranoleptic characteristics than cheese made with cow's milk. Sheep's milk has almost double the fat and proteins than cow's milk so it's a much richer cheese. Sheep's milk also lacks the carotene in cow's milk so sheep's milk is actually white, while cow's milk is more of a yellow tinge (depending on breed and feed). Cow's milk used to make feta-like cheeses must often be treated by whitening agents or the cheese will not be the white colour expected of feta. Sheep's milk (and goat's milk) needs no such treatment.

I think the reason you ask the question is that you're used to eating cow's milk cheese sold as "feta" and thinking of it as "feta", when it's really nothing like feta. This is what you get when you let anyone call anything by any name. The meaning of words gets muddled and you end up thinking "eh, it's all the same thing anyway". Eventually, you lose the ability to distinguish different products by taste or smell because the character of the product gets diluted down so much that it's really a big same-y tasteless, odourless, boring thing. And then of course you wonder "why not just call it all the same"?