In the truly bizarre world of international trade regulations and negotiations, U.S. dairy processors could be forbidden to describe their products as “American cheese.”
When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Our ovate friend was talking to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s “Through The Looking-Glass.”
When it comes to cheese names, the European Union takes a decidedly “more” approach. Some would call it “monopolistic.”
Never mind that most of the world freely uses and understands the word Parmesan as it applies to cheese. To the EU, however, Parm means only Parmigiano-Reggiano. And feta is a cheese made only in Greece. The EU is trying to force its approach to food names on every country in the world. It already has gummed up the South Korean market for non-EU makers of Asiago, feta, fontina and Gorgonzola. The EU’s free trade agreement with the Koreans forbids the use of those names by anyone except EU processors.
Welcome to the issue of geographical indication, now playing in trade talks between the United States and the EU. If our nation’s trade negotiators fail to represent the dairy industry’s point of view, U.S. cheesemakers won’t be able to use common cheese names like Brie, Camembert, Cheddar and Swiss. Even the term “American cheese” is at risk.
Sound far-fetched? Not if you’ve been following the flap over common food names. The situation is absurd, restrictive and anti-competitive. And it could be law if the European Union bullies U.S. trade negotiators in a series of trade talks called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or T-TIP.
Dairy interests in the United States are livid (and rightly so) about the potential naming grab by the Europeans.
“The EU’s attempt to claw back generic cheese names from the United States domestic market is an absurdity,” Clay Hough, a senior group vice president and general counsel of the International Dairy Foods Association, told me last month.
When he spoke to the Trade Policy Staff Committee in May, Hough said the IDFA views “these claw back efforts by the EU as de facto barriers to trade. They are a clear effort to limit competition and to bestow upon EU producers a considerable portion of the valuable markets that our companies have devoted time and resources to help build.”