Re:The EU’s disputed system of geographical indications is t...
by bcrosby95 on Sunday June 27, 2021 @01:27PM
(#27653382)
Note that Cheddar isn't protected, but "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" is.
My cynical take is that it doesn't have a more general designation because companies couldn't profit from Cheddar the way they do if it had to be produced in Cheddar Gorge.
Re:The EU’s disputed system of geographical indications is t...
by denton-scratch on Monday June 28, 2021 @03:58AM
(#27659158)
It doesn't have to be produced in Cheddar Gorge.
Cheddar Gorge is a canyon, full of mobile hamburger stalls. There are no fields there, and no creameries. West Country Farmhouse Cheddar isn't produced in Cheddar Gorge. It doesn't even have to be produced in Somerset.
I have no problem labeling a cheese "feta" if the location of production is clearly indicated. "Feta" is just "shorthand" for "feta-style". Everyone will just call it "feta" anyway. Maybe it doesn't matter if it says "feta-style" or "feta" but the whole thing seems sort of silly to me and a waste of money. It's fighting a losing battle.
It's not that I don't appreciate cheeses from their original locations; it's just that this labeling initiative seems disingenuous to me, in that it seems to be fighting normal processes of language evolution and change.
A better example maybe is cheddar. This is something so entrenched in American vernacular that the idea that we should insist on labeling it "cheddar-style" is clearly unnecessary. When someone says "cheddar" in the US about 99.9% of the time they are referring to a style of cheese, maybe from New York, maybe Vermont, maybe Wisconsin, maybe from England, maybe somewhere else. They're not referring to a location. "Cheddar" and "cheddar" in this context are polysemous homonyms/polysemes.
Arguments about replicating some original flavor of a place of origin are missing the real underlying problem, which is that labeling a product according to its commonly understood meaning, if the location of production is clearly given in the packaging, is not deceptive. Sure, we can tack on "-style" onto everything but it's not going to keep people from ignoring it in speech.