To get a DPO registration you must show both historical ties to the region and a specific regional method. There is a quality control board. Probably some of it is puffery; some of it is quite precise.
The buyers did not decide to give this regional trade-mark. That was some government somewhere. The buyers tend to follow that. And perhaps the buyers only value the "stringent quality check" of the mark, and do not care for the "region check" but they have no alternatives.
>perhaps the buyers only value the "stringent quality check" of the mark, and do not care for the "region check"
This goes hand in hand since the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has no interest in verifying quality of cheese from other regions.
The cheese producers located elsewhere are free to found their own consortium for quality checking, build up its reputation and convince customers to value it the same as parmigiano reggiano.
Good luck competing in any economical sense if you're importing cows from Parma to give them uncontaminated feed from Parma then aging the cheese in an artificial climate like Parma's.
Corners are invariably cut. Do they matter? Maybe, maybe not. But why do you need to name your cheese after a region it's not from? Grana padano's done fine for itself, for example.
https://www.parmigianoreggiano.com/consortium-specifications...
reply