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Somewhat of a tangent, but can we stop caring about the location where a product was made and focus solely on quality itself? Like, I bet the counterfeiters make a lot of money by producing quality cheese that taste just as good but are just made somewhere else.
Can only judge quality by trademarks and place of origin is essentially an extension of trademark. I don't really have a problem with it.
You do understand that quality isn't based on who produced it, but on the product itself, right? Cheese doesn't suddenly get better because it has the Parmesan trademark. Quality is supposed to be an objective measure of the thing itself.
The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium establishes the rules for production and enforces them. Nobody's stopping you from making your own Parmigiano wherever you want, you just can't call it that, because the name acts as a quality guarantee for the consumer.
Otherwise you'd have a situation like buying crap on Amazon where you never know if you're going to receive a functioning gadget or not.
So they are stopping me from doing that. If I can't call something what the consumer expects, I can't make the thing the consumer expects. Because that's what this discussion is about: these kinds of labels should be only for quality, not for region of production. I am not advocating for dropping the label or handing it out everywhere.
Unless you're trying to tell me the cheese is necessarily of worse quality in a way that's not physically measurable just because it wasn't made in the same region, the region label adds exactly nothing above a purely quality-based label.
It's a brand name, they can do whatever they want with it. Would you be up in arms if coca-cola decided to produce only in a specific area? Because that's kinda what they did with the sludge.
And yes, for some things the area matters, the soil, the weather, etc. Again, it acts as a, albeit minimal, guarantee for the customer, that's why it exists
You understand that this whole discussion started with somebody saying "wouldn't it be cool if these labels were solely based on quality instead of location"?
Yes, we all know that it's a brand name, and they can do whatever they want with it. We are talking about how that maybe shouldn't be the case. Do you understand that? What value do you bring to the discussion by saying "but they're allowed to!!!1!1!"?
If the location has an effect on quality, it is measurable purely by quality without taking location into account. If you need to know the location because it's not measurable, it shouldn't be taken into account.
No, you can't make Parmigiano Reggiano outside of the area of, drum roll, Parma or Reggio (with a few convenient exception)! I mean it's not hard to understand that if it's got the location in the name, then the location is part of the product! If you change the product, then it may be as good as you want, even better, but it's not the same product, so you have to use a different name, that's all!
Especially since, unlike for example Champagne, Parmigiano Reggiano is, again, a fucking brand name, you can't brand watches as Rolex without Rolex coming to tear you a new one!
You can make Grana wherever you want! Go Grana your heart out! But I used to work in the dairy industry, and let me tell you, location makes A LOT of difference, there are a shitload of Italians in the US for example, but they have a lot of difficulties replicating what they used to make in Italy, there's got to be a reason, right?
My guy. You do understand that it's not a rule of nature that only cheese from those regions can be called Parmigiano Reggiano? It's a rule that is made by us, and we could change this rule?
I literally have no idea what you're trying to tell me. Why do you think it's impossible to change these rules? Why can't you imagine a world without them?
Just as an example: you can make a Frankfurter sausage outside of Frankfurt, or a Wiener sausage outside of Vienna. Doing so doesn't make the sausage explode and kill everyone around them, or make the gods raze the city for their insolence. It just... works. Why can't you imagine the same working for cheese? Where is the rule of nature that disallows this to happen?
I don't know how I could be more clear, the name of the type of cheese is GRANA! Just like a Wiener sausage is a type of sausage, you can't call your sausage "Original Austrian Sausage from Wien" because it's a fucking lie! The same goes for Parmigiano!
... no. Grana Padano is a different kind of cheese that is produced differently. It's not just produced in a different location, it's made up of slightly different things than Parmigiano Reggiano. This is a quality difference. Are you really too dense to understand this?
Yes, it's a type of sausage. It's not called what it's called because of where they are produced, but because of how they are produced. The same should go for Parmigiano Reggiano. Do you finally get the difference?
No, despite your trip to Wikipedia you don't know what you're talking about, Grana Padano Is another brand, the kind of cheese is called Grana, Grana Padano just (imho illegally) protected an existing name. In Italy when you ask for Grana you are asking for either Grana or Parmigiano, but if you ask for Parmigiano then it's only that.
That's got zero to do with Parmigiano. Trentingrana for example is Grana Padano produced outside of the latter's regulations, just like you are demanding, well they just used a different name.
And this still doesn't change the simple fact that things should be called based on what they are, not where they were made.