Protecting Europe’s Culinary Heritage
/Hello fellow traveler!
If you have read my blog postings from the beginning, you will have heard me talk about PDO Cheeses, that is to say, cheeses that have been awarded the “Protected Designation of Origin” status. Since this acclaimed designation is so important, and yet so hard to achieve, I thought I should dedicate this week’s post to this subject, as I have researched this subject in great depth and in 2015 wrote a book on the subject.
To fully understand the PDO story, you must travel back to France to the year 1411. That is the year when King Charles VI of France (ruled from 1380-1422) signed a charter which gave the villagers of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, the sole right to produce and age Roquefort cheese. This ruling was the first of its type to protect a food product that is linked to a certain area.
This protection was later enhanced, as a decree of the Toulouse parliament dating from 1666 imposed heavy fines on merchants selling cheap imitations under the name Roquefort.
Government control of French agricultural products began in the modern age with the law of August 1, 1905, granting the government authority to define the official boundaries for the production of certain agricultural products. A second law was passed on May 6, 1919, for the Protection of the Place of Origin. It specified the region and commune in which a given product must be manufactured, and gave the courts power to act in cases where the regulations were not being followed.
These rulings helped to create the appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC), which translates as "controlled designation of origin". It is the French certification, granted to certain French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters and other agricultural products.
Because of its long recorded history, Roquefort was the first French cheese to be protected under this new ruling on July 26, 1925.
On July 30, 1935, the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO), a branch of the French Ministry of Agriculture, was created to manage the administration of the process of AOC products. Today, this organization is known as the Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité.
Other countries took notice of this “protection” of France’s food product and created their own similar programs:
• Spain - Rioja (1925) and Sherry (1933) were among Spain’s first foodstuffs to be granted a protected status under what later became the Spanish Denominación de origen (DO) system.
• Italy – In 1963, Italy awarded its first protected status known as Denominazione di Origine Protetta (DOP).
These European countries pioneered the concept of regulatory protection of foodstuffs to protect the reputation of the regional foods, promote rural and agricultural activity, help producers obtain a premium price for their authentic products, and eliminate the unfair competition and misleading of consumers by non-genuine products.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, the European Union (EU) was in the process of completing the creation of its single and barrier-free internal market. Protecting producers of foodstuffs against attempts by others to exploit the reputation of their products was a major concern. Against this background, an EU-wide solution had to be found. This meant adopting a uniform approach, establishing fair conditions of competition between producers while not undermining quality schemes already in existence. As a result, the three indicators were created:
Protected Designation of Origin - PDO: covers agricultural products and foodstuffs which are produced, processed and prepared in a given geographical area using recognized know-how.
Protected Geographical Indication - PGI: covers agricultural products and foodstuffs closely linked to the geographical area. At least one of the stages of production, processing or preparation takes place in the area.
Traditional Speciality Guaranteed - TSG: highlights traditional character, either in the composition or means of production.
Simply put, PDO stands for Protected Designation of Origin.
The Protected Designation of Origin is the name of an area, a specific place or, in exceptional cases, the name of a country, used as a designation for an agricultural product or a foodstuff which comes from such an area, place or country,
· whose quality or properties are significantly or exclusively determined by the geographical environment, including natural and human factors,
· whose production, processing and preparation takes place within the determined geographical area.
In other words, to receive the PDO status, the entire product must be traditionally and entirely manufactured (prepared, processed and produced) within the specific region and thus acquire unique properties.
Today, the European Union contains twenty-eight member states, which speak a total of twenty-four languages.
Now that you have the history behind these logos, you just need to think of the PDO logo as the European Union equivalent of the French AOC, the Spanish DO, and the Italian DOP.
If you look closely at the map, you will notice one small country that is not a member of the EU. While Switzerland is about the size of New Hampshire and Massachusetts combined, it is the center of banking in Europe, so today it remains on its own currency, and has its own form of protection which it adopted from the French. Enter the Swiss AOP logo:
Today, the European Union has 189 protected cheeses under the PDO status; combine that with the Swiss AOP protection, and you add another 12 for a total of 201 protected cheeses across Europe. If the future months and years, I hope to explore many of these with you.
Until next week…
Trevor
