For those of us who can’t tell Champagne from sparkling white wine, it can often seem like squabbling over nothing.
Why do certain food need special status?
It has become increasingly important to know where our food comes from. Not just for health reasons, but also, as consumers become more discerning, as a guarantee of quality.
Besides, the protection of food names is a small part of a bigger issue of retaining local identity in a world of supranational government and globalisation.
In the 18th century, French gourmet Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” He is right to the extent that food can be one of the most easily identifiable characteristics of a group of people.
Ask someone to think of Italy, and up there with Da Vinci, the mafia, the Colosseum and Venice come pizza and pasta.
Ask an Englishman what he associates with the word Yorkshire, and there’s a good chance he’ll say pudding.
Any attempt to preserve and protect our culinary heritage should be applauded. But, for many, protecting particular food names is little more than an over-hyped trade dispute.
The current discussions about changes to the EU food classification system come partly as a result of American and Australian complaints to the World Trade Organisation that this is just another form of trade barrier to protect European produce from imports.
In many ways, it’s a convincing argument. Numerous studies have shown that there are great benefits to having protected status. One study shows that it can add an 18 per cent premium to a product, which means a good rise in profit.
There can also be other benefits. For example, Welsh sheep farmers are eligible for increased subsidies from the government in order to promote Welsh lamb as a regional speciality.
For those of the losing end of a decision the costs can be high.
Last year, a Yorkshire company contested the right to call their cheese “Yorkshire Feta”, following an EU decision that the name “Feta” should be the sole preserve of Greece. The company, Shepherd’s Purse Cheese, said that rebranding and remarketing their product would be very expensive.
The classification system itself can seem quite complicated, although there are only three categories.
Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) refers to food produced, processed and prepared in a given geographical area using recognised know-how. Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) is for products where the geographical link occurs at the production, processing or preparation stage. And finally, Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) highlights a product’s traditional character, either in ingredients or means of production.
It has a tendency to sound like politicians trying to complicate something which is in reality quite simple, but there is heated debate over what should or should not receive protected status.
For natural products it’s easier to distinguish. Jersey potatoes are protected because they are only found in Jersey. Brussels sprouts, on the other hand, are not only found in the Belgian capital, and therefore do not enjoy any special status.
But as we have seen with feta cheese, the debate over which has been raging for almost four years, the classification of prepared food can be much more complicated.
It would seem that having your food recognised by official organisations as being unique is just as important for those involved as, say, minority languages are for others. There are many more issues that are important to only small groups of people.
Among the many bodies and institutions that make up the EU there is what is called the Committee of the Regions. Set up by the Maastricht treaty of 2002, the idea is that by having another layer of representation, the EU gives a voice to local and regional authorities.
Some of the regions are based on historical entities, such as Wales, Catalonia in north-eastern Spain, or Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. Others are purely administrative regions arbitrarily decided on by parliaments, such as South-East England.
Some regions are more prominent than others, and it’s generally those who have an axe to grind with their national parliaments who heartily support notions of regional committees. It allows their views to be transmitted directly to Brussels rather than being filtered through the various stages of government.
It can be very easy for those national governments sitting in the capital to become distanced from what is happening locally, and the Committee of the Regions is one way of bridging that gap.
Of course, it’s still politicians talking to politicians, but it’s a start.
In some of the regions members of the local population would prefer to bypass national government altogether. Indeed, some look to the EU as a way through which they might be able to gain their independence from their ‘state’.
One such group of people are the Basques, whose ‘country’ straddles the French-Spanish border at the western end of the Pyrenees. Some people there believe a more powerful Europe would enable them to stop having to deal with Madrid and Paris and strike out on their own under the umbrella of the EU.
While we are unlikely to witness the end of the nation-state for some time yet, the relevance of regional authorities is clearly a very important characteristic of
Europe today.
Understanding regional identity is important for the European project as whole. If people consider themselves Breton and not French, it could be very difficult to make them feel European.
In Spain at the moment, the issue of increasing the power of the Catalan government is being debated, as is the terminology used to define Catalonia. Is it a region, a country, a community?
There are members of the current Catalan government who’d like to see complete independence from Spain.
Something which would of course be celebrated with a glass of Champagne, or rather Cava as their sparkling white wine is called.
