Dairy, other groups praise Senate letter on common food and wine terms
The letter urges the administration to make greater strides to protect these terms.
The Consortium for Common Food Names (CCFN), the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), National Milk Producers Federation, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the North America Meat Institute, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and the Wine Institute praised a bipartisan Senate letter sent July 30 to U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. The letter urges stronger international safeguards to protect U.S. exporters using common food and wine terms. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) led the effort, which resulted in support from a total of 61 Senators.
The letter requests that the U.S. government enhance common food name protections as a core policy objective in all trade-related discussions. This is a direct challenge to the European Union (EU) misuse of protections meant for valid geographical indications (GIs) to instead block American exports of common or generic food and wine terms such as Parmesan, feta, bologna or chateau, the groups said. These unjustified trade barriers harm American farmers, limit choices for consumers and put manufacturing jobs across an essential sector at risk.