Last month, Mr. Martinez introduced a bill to add some teeth to a 2011 law that everyone had hoped would safeguard the status of New Mexico’s chiles, but has fallen short. The new bill aims to force out-of-state chile peppers, in their natural and processed forms, to display on their package an unusual disclaimer: “not grown in New Mexico.”

“It’s to guard against impostors, to keep them honest,” Representative Martinez said on a recent morning.

Protecting New Mexican chile peppers has been a tough battle, in part because not every legislator buys into the idea that the right way to do it is to create more rules. The state, hobbled by a sluggish economic recovery, has also found it difficult to find money to finance new programs.

Representative Martinez’s bill passed unanimously in the House Agriculture and Water Resources Committee last month. Then, on Wednesday, it was shelved by an 8-to-7 vote in the House Judiciary Committee after a spirited debate over whether it might be too burdensome for small growers. On Thursday, though, there was already talk that the bill could be resurrected after the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Gail Chasey, a Democrat, said, “It is not necessarily dead.” An identical bill has already been introduced in the Senate. Washington State trademarked its apples in 1961 and Virginia trademarked its peanuts in 2006. In the late 1980s, under stiff competition from states like Texas and California, Georgia wrote into law exactly what type of seeds and soil would yield its sweet Vidalia onions. A year later, the federal government endorsed the same parameters and the brand was certified in 1990.