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Parmesan Makers Add Microchips To Cheese Wheels To Foil Counterfeiters
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Somewhat of a tangent, but can we stop caring about the location where a product was made and focus solely on quality itself? Like, I bet the counterfeiters make a lot of money by producing quality cheese that taste just as good but are just made somewhere else.
Some foods do have specific, regional character. Is the milk or yeast from the next county over going to make a cheese that tastes the same? Idk but you can get very similar styles of cheese made elsewhere.
That all being said, I can see why calling same thing Parmesan when it's not from Parma, is not entirely truthful, if consumers care about origin. Which in the EU they certainly do.
You have a good point. At the same time, I'd like to pay what I think I'm getting. If someone is selling me something and making me think it's something else, I think that's wrong.
We are focusing on both, afaik. I'm pretty sure the doc/aop/igp qualifications relate to quality as well as geography. It's not just about the location.
And there's nothing stopping anyone from making a better cheese, naming it whatever else other than a trademarked name and building a reputation for quality. So I don't see what the issue is.
Edit: happy now?
"Can we stop caring about location and only care about quality?"
"Technically we are, the qualifications relate to quality as well as geography"
?? No, technically we are not.
I for one really do not care whether it's called Parmesan or Parmigiano Regiano. Good cheese is good cheese.
Can only judge quality by trademarks and place of origin is essentially an extension of trademark. I don't really have a problem with it.
If it wasn't strictly bound to origin but could be, say, at least "licensed out" (perhaps with the places of origin still at least getting a small cut) it could be a win-win-win.
But as it is it's just artificially inflating prices of goods that are potentially just as good (or in some cases potentially even worse) than some alternatives.
You do understand that quality isn't based on who produced it, but on the product itself, right? Cheese doesn't suddenly get better because it has the Parmesan trademark. Quality is supposed to be an objective measure of the thing itself.
Maybe my argument wasn't as plainitively obvious as I thought it was. The only way to develop an opinion on quality is to personally trust the supplier or rely on trademarks. Without either you will not know if you're getting the same product and quality will vary wildly. In an open market, the only way is to rely on trademarks. Place of origin is an extension of the trademark system.
Absolutely not. The only way to actually trust the quality of a product is independent testing. Just because a trademark is on a product doesn't mean that every charge has similar quality, that the quality stays the same over longer periods of time, and that a competitor doesn't have better quality.
Looking at only trademarks gets you exactly one thing: an expensive product. Nothing more.
Uh huh. So are you suggesting you independently test every product at point of sale? Or do you suggest certifying said product and affixing some sort of mark of trade upon it? Maybe even personally testing said product and then identifying it later based on it's mark of trade?
No.
A trademark is not solely based on quality, so no.
No.
I can't compete with obtuseness of this magnitude.
Neither can I with this degree of corporate bootlicking.
The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium establishes the rules for production and enforces them. Nobody's stopping you from making your own Parmigiano wherever you want, you just can't call it that, because the name acts as a quality guarantee for the consumer.
Otherwise you'd have a situation like buying crap on Amazon where you never know if you're going to receive a functioning gadget or not.
So they are stopping me from doing that. If I can't call something what the consumer expects, I can't make the thing the consumer expects. Because that's what this discussion is about: these kinds of labels should be only for quality, not for region of production. I am not advocating for dropping the label or handing it out everywhere.
Unless you're trying to tell me the cheese is necessarily of worse quality in a way that's not physically measurable just because it wasn't made in the same region, the region label adds exactly nothing above a purely quality-based label.
It's a brand name, they can do whatever they want with it. Would you be up in arms if coca-cola decided to produce only in a specific area? Because that's kinda what they did with the sludge.
And yes, for some things the area matters, the soil, the weather, etc. Again, it acts as a, albeit minimal, guarantee for the customer, that's why it exists
You understand that this whole discussion started with somebody saying "wouldn't it be cool if these labels were solely based on quality instead of location"?
Yes, we all know that it's a brand name, and they can do whatever they want with it. We are talking about how that maybe shouldn't be the case. Do you understand that? What value do you bring to the discussion by saying "but they're allowed to!!!1!1!"?
If the location has an effect on quality, it is measurable purely by quality without taking location into account. If you need to know the location because it's not measurable, it shouldn't be taken into account.
No, you can't make Parmigiano Reggiano outside of the area of, drum roll, Parma or Reggio (with a few convenient exception)! I mean it's not hard to understand that if it's got the location in the name, then the location is part of the product! If you change the product, then it may be as good as you want, even better, but it's not the same product, so you have to use a different name, that's all!
Especially since, unlike for example Champagne, Parmigiano Reggiano is, again, a fucking brand name, you can't brand watches as Rolex without Rolex coming to tear you a new one!
You can make Grana wherever you want! Go Grana your heart out! But I used to work in the dairy industry, and let me tell you, location makes A LOT of difference, there are a shitload of Italians in the US for example, but they have a lot of difficulties replicating what they used to make in Italy, there's got to be a reason, right?
My guy. You do understand that it's not a rule of nature that only cheese from those regions can be called Parmigiano Reggiano? It's a rule that is made by us, and we could change this rule?
I literally have no idea what you're trying to tell me. Why do you think it's impossible to change these rules? Why can't you imagine a world without them?
Just as an example: you can make a Frankfurter sausage outside of Frankfurt, or a Wiener sausage outside of Vienna. Doing so doesn't make the sausage explode and kill everyone around them, or make the gods raze the city for their insolence. It just... works. Why can't you imagine the same working for cheese? Where is the rule of nature that disallows this to happen?
I don't know how I could be more clear, the name of the type of cheese is GRANA! Just like a Wiener sausage is a type of sausage, you can't call your sausage "Original Austrian Sausage from Wien" because it's a fucking lie! The same goes for Parmigiano!
... no. Grana Padano is a different kind of cheese that is produced differently. It's not just produced in a different location, it's made up of slightly different things than Parmigiano Reggiano. This is a quality difference. Are you really too dense to understand this?
Yes, it's a type of sausage. It's not called what it's called because of where they are produced, but because of how they are produced. The same should go for Parmigiano Reggiano. Do you finally get the difference?
No, despite your trip to Wikipedia you don't know what you're talking about, Grana Padano Is another brand, the kind of cheese is called Grana, Grana Padano just (imho illegally) protected an existing name. In Italy when you ask for Grana you are asking for either Grana or Parmigiano, but if you ask for Parmigiano then it's only that.
That's got zero to do with Parmigiano. Trentingrana for example is Grana Padano produced outside of the latter's regulations, just like you are demanding, well they just used a different name.
And this still doesn't change the simple fact that things should be called based on what they are, not where they were made.
No, quality is independent of location of production. Proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say. Reputation is tied to the producer. Quality is tied to an individual instance of the product. Thats why certain things have QA tags. This technology doesn't represent quality. It only verifies sourcing.
As long as the counterfeit cheese meets all production regulations and is safe to eat I dont care. But the truth is the counterfeit probably cut amlot of corners and isn't that safe and if people get sick will be much harder to track and prevent future issues.
It likely ranges. A lot of time the counterfeit is good cheese, it's just not from the correct region. It's not like buying a "Soony Walkman" or something. And if you can't tell it's counterfeit by how it tastes after the fact, then who is this program protecting?
I am ok with “imitations” that follow the same process but it gets really specific when it’s about the weather in a specific region making. You can reproduce the same environment and bacterias but to get it just like the original it’s probably a lot more difficult than to make the product in its traditional “authentic” setting. Unless it allows increased production it’s difficult to see how it would be commercially viable. So in practice they cut corners and it’s not as good as the real one.