EU trade deal would replace some cheese names like gouda, provolone

When Tom Murray, owner of Muranda Cheese Co. in Seneca County, first started making and selling cheese, he thought about customers, and quality, and production, and storage and other questions cheesemakers ponder.

He didn't think the European Union would come after him. But it has.

Currently, the United States and the EU are trying to simplify the costly export and import regulations that often require businesses to adhere to two different sets of rules if they are to sell both in North America and Europe.

Big money is at stake. According to a study done for the European Commission, the gains from a more streamlined trade agreement could save more than $406 billion a year.

It's in that context that names have become important.

If the EU has its way and wins trademark protection for many popular cheeses, a lot of New York, and American, farmers will have to take familiar names off many exported cheeses and replace them with new, and unfamiliar, ones.

A free-trade deal struck with Canada this fall establishes that the EU basically owns the names of the cheeses and that any new processors in Canada —current ones are OK —will have to add the qualifiers "style'' or "like'' when marketing gorgonzola, Gouda and many other products abroad. The U.S. has yet to agree to these restrictions, according to Sen. Chuck Schumer.

"They're playing hardball," Murray said of the EU's insistence that cheesemakers can't call their products "gouda" or "feta" or "provolone" or "ricotta" unless the cheeses come from the regions in the European countries where that type of cheese originated.

It's analogous to France's longtime insistence that only sparkling wine made in the Champagne region can use the name. In this fight for cheese trademark protection are France, Italy, Greece, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and England.

That's England — as in cheddar.

It's not just cheese names that have riled Europe. The EU claims also that scotch must actually come from Scotland and Parma ham has to be from Parma, Italy.

According to Murray and Schumer, this dispute is about the name, not the substance of the product. "We made gouda cheese," Murray said. "There's no difference."

"Gouda is gouda, no matter how you slice it," Schumer said.

In fact, Muranda produces several kinds of cheese, though in this case the significant one is gouda. According to Schumer's office, Muranda's gouda reads "Gotcha, Gouda-style cheese."

According to a list of cheese-making New York farms that Schumer has promulgated, Muranda Cheese Co. and two other Seneca County farmers are directly affected by the EU's position.

The other two are Lively Run Goat Dairy in Interlaken, which makes feta and chevre cheeses, among others, and Vanillen Dairy in Ovid, which makes many different kinds of cheese, as well as gelato. Cuba Cheese Co. and Friendship Dairy in Allegany County could be affected, too.

Schumer said the EU approach endangers a lot of New York small farmers. According to Schumer, there are 127 licensed cheesemakers in New York state. And Rochester's Wegmans Food Markets has created a partnership with Cornell to teach dairy farmers how to make and age cheese.

"The EU's approach takes a reasonable concept too far and as a result actively restricts reasonable competition," Schumer said.

Before the EU trade deal was made, Canada and Greece had their own tiff over feta cheese, which the Greeks insist can't be named that unless it comes from Greece.

"The possibility of made-in-Canada feta coming to the EU must be removed completely from the rhetoric of any public discussion today," Dimitri Melas, a high-ranking official in the Greek government's agriculture development ministry, said in a comment reported in the Ottawa media.

Melas argued, as other European officials have, that existing European rules require that white, brined cheese can only be called feta if it was produced in Greece.

The Greek press has reported that the government there is ready to veto any Canada-EU free trade agreement that doesn't maintain product protections.

"If the EU loses feta, then other products will follow," said Melas.

TTOBIN@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/tobin3