This week, an international furor erupted over the European Union’s proposal that US foodmakers be restricted from using names with historical ties to Europe – including, but not limited to, Parmesan, Muenster and feta. Now it’s not very often that the cheese world has a scandal of these proportions – and, yes, I am a 12-year veteran of the American “specialty” cheese industry – so Cheesegate had me thinking: maybe those Euros are right.

Yes, I thought: Parmigiano Reggiano, regulated down to its fat content and aroma and “crust thickness”, really is a unique invention. Who are we to get all jingoistic in defending it as our own?

Real feta, produced in Greece from sheep and goat milk, bears no relation whatsoever to the insipid salt crumbles most of us find in American supermarkets.

You can’t call Grade A beef “prime”, right? And what’s so bad about calling it “Gorgonzola-style” anyway?

For decades, the countries that now comprise the European Union have been regulating and protecting their most one-of-a-kind foodstuffs – items made with specific ingredients, following traditional recipes, produced in tight, localized environments. It was these perseverant bites of history that first seduced me into a career of cheese.

In addition to multiple country appellation systems, the European Union has the so-called protected designation of origin (PDO). Its function is the same, and so singular products like French Champagne – made only in the Champagne region, in-bottle secondary fermentation, specific grapes, etc. – are protected, in most parts of the globe, from shoddy imitation.

But think about that: a PDO cheese is entirely different from a “name with historical ties to Europe”, right? By the logic of the regulators, we’d have to rename nearly every city and town in the Eastern United States. Our country’s legacy is one big, historical tie to Europe.

“Cheddar” can be dozens of different cheeses, each tasty in its own right, but hardly consistent in age, flavor, shape or even milk. The last time I checked with the Swiss, they didn’t much care for joining the EU, and “Swiss cheese” was still a troublesome catch-all for makers trying to differentiate their own handcrafted cheeses.

There’s a reason why such generic terms were never protected in their countries of origin or in regions like Parma, Italy: they didn’t offer anything unique enough to warrant lionization.

What food monikers did offer was a reference point – a gateway to innovation – and that’s an even better reason why they shouldn’t be protected now.

In the past hundred years, the US has transformed from a collection of immigrant pockets busily producing approximations of the foods they remembered from home into the world’s largest producer – and exporter – of cheese. The dozen or so cheese types now up for debate, all with historical ties to Europe, have become the de facto brands for emerging markets. America was that emerging market 40 years ago, as words like “Asiago” and “fontina” became our vocabulary for speaking in cheese.

Words are the building blocks of a market – any market, anywhere in the world where hundreds of varieties of a given food simply aren’t part of the national culture. Which is to say, pretty much anywhere that isn’t Europe.

It’s the laying of this foundation that enables consumers to advance, to branch out, to become experts, and to spend more money. It’s a model that’s well known in fashion (H&M) or home furnishings (Ikea): invoke the couture that consumers can’t afford or didn’t see coming, and build a lexicon for future buyers.

Here’s the thing about the true PDO foods of Europe: they are, by their very nature, finite. They’re protected because they are traditional – handcrafted, not commodified. Five designated provinces in Italy can’t produce enough Parmigiano Reggiano for the entire world to grate, and even if they could, the costs would be too high for much of the market to bear. Which means someone needs to be making the cheese that gets new consumers in the door. Ironically, that someone could be in the EU just as easily as in the US.

Look no further than your own backyard for proof that it takes less than a generation to lead consumers through the gateway cheeses and turn them into discerning and committed connoisseurs. Here in the States, hundreds of cheesemakers are now making thousands of cheeses that are marketed and sold under singular names: one producer, one cheese name – no Swiss, Parmesan or Brie in sight. These foods sell at two to three times the price of the generics, their sales grow by double digits each year, and it makes for good competition. A rising tide may lift all boats, but what the EU seems unable to recognize is that open-source cheese builds global consumption.

Plus, saying “Gorgonzola-style” or “the hard white stuff” just sounds kinda weird.