AP Photos U.S. to Europe: Don't move my cheese A dispute over protecting geographically based food names like 'gouda' and 'gorgonzola' is the latest sticking point in the Asia-Pacific trade talks.

Paul Ryan brandishing a large wedge of gouda at a hearing might tell you everything you need to know about global trade at the moment.

“For generations, we’ve been making gouda in Wisconsin,” the Republican Ways and Means chairman said at the hearing earlier this year. “And for generations to come, we’re going to keep making gouda in Wisconsin. And feta, and cheddar and everything else.”


But in the realm of international trade negotiations, laying claim to what you call your food isn’t so simple.

Feta is Greek. Gouda is Dutch. But both are also as Wisconsin as it gets. In the heat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, a raging debate has broken out about whether individual countries own the intellectual property rights on names of food and drink. Do the French own brie? Italians gorgonzola? Can Australian vintners call their sparkling wine champagne? The European Union comes to the debate brandishing not cheese but position papers that insist on protecting these so-called “geographic indicators” for food, according to leaked documents obtained by POLITICO.

With weighty issues like child labor, tariffs and wages dominating discussions of global trade negotiations, food labeling may seem trivial. But the terminology appeals to something stronger: national identity. Not to mention tons of money for farmers and food companies.

Now the debate has emerged as a point of contention in the Trans-Pacific talks, which enter a critical phase later this week when negotiators meet in Maui, Hawaii: While the European Union is trying to bar countries elsewhere from allowing the use of its regional food names, the United States is using the trans-Pacific trade pact to counter the EU’s moves, the trade agreement’s leaked intellectual property chapter shows.

Washington is pressing for language that would allow countries in the Asia-Pacific deal to reject protections for European regional food names if they could be confused with trademarks or common names. That would allow artisan butchers to keep selling their products as prosciutto and chorizo, for example — and Wisconsin to keep selling cheeses labeled asiago and gorgonzola.

The revelation came as the U.S. and EU wrapped up another round of talks last week on their own mega trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, where the so-called “geographical indications” issue has been so contentious it has largely been avoided. It also came after the EU scored a victory on the issue at the World Intellectual Property Organization, which recently prompted a backlash from trade and judiciary leaders in Congress by imposing protections for the geographic names.

“Without adequate safeguards, companies in the United States and other countries will experience diminished sales opportunities and eroded intellectual property rights in countries that threaten to block their use of common food names on a world-wide basis,” wrote the lawmakers, who included Senate Finance leaders Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways and Means leaders Ryan and Sander Levin (D-Mich.).

Under the EU system, countries that agree to its list of protected names have to stop labeling products with them. Instead of gorgonzola, the cheese is “gorgonzola-style.”

“I think it’s pretty unfair when you see those products,” said Massimo Vittori, managing director of oriGIn, a Geneva-based group that advocates the protection of geographical indications. He added: “Even though this has been done for many years, it doesn’t mean the lie gets any truer.”

So far, four of the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership countries have such agreements: Canada, Peru, Chile and Singapore. Brussels is pushing similar protections in trade talks with Japan and Vietnam.

But the U.S. dairy industry has millions of dollars at stake in the fight over food names in the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific market. Not being able to sell products in those countries under widely recognized names would deal an enormous blow to foreign sales.

Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said Friday that the trade deal needs to “ensure that GIs aren’t being misused by applying them to generic names and the names that are already trademarked.”

But the EU countered in a recently leaked strategy paper that “gouda” isn’t even a name that it’s trying to protect. Both sides should “de-dramatize” the debate over geographical indications, especially in the trans-Atlantic trade talks, the European Commission paper said, adding that 95 percent of the names the EU wants to protect aren’t a problem for the U.S.

It’s not a one-sided issue, either, the EU said. Think Napa Valley wines, Idaho potatoes, Vidalia onions. Producers of those products also want to protect the value that name recognition can bring.

“This is the trend,” the paper said. “GIs have become a global phenomenon in developed, emerging (India, China) and developing countries.”

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But the massive U.S. dairy industry and other sectors fighting the EU protections see the sprawling trans-Pacific trade deal, which negotiators could wrap up this month, as an important opportunity to push back against the EU’s global agenda. The leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership text from May 11 shows that the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, whose major dairy industries exported roughly half of the world’s $39 billion in shipments in 2011, are all trying to use the agreement to undo what the EU has secured in its own pacts with TPP countries.

Washington would allow those governments to oppose protected EU regional names over trademark and common-name concerns as well as if there wasn’t enough public input. The U.S., Australia and New Zealand also want language that would allow countries in the deal to protest EU names that other TPP countries have established in separate trade deals with the 28-nation bloc.

The U.S. also wants these procedures to apply to any trade deals that member nations have signed since Dec. 13, 2013 — an apparent reference to the Canada-EU trade deal, in which Ottawa agreed to protections for several EU names that the U.S. dairy industry opposes.

“In so many forums around the world, including in WIPO, the U.S. government has been working aggressively to help safeguard the use of common names,” said Jaime Castaneda, executive director of the Consortium for Common Food Names and senior vice president for trade policy at the U.S. Dairy Export Council. “But we still have a lot more work to do given how actively the EU is working to plant trade barriers around the world.”