No offense, but there's nothing particularly special about Feta produced in Greece. Feta-style cheeses are produced across a fairly wide region in the Eastern Mediterranean, and I don't think the style is so singular that it can't be (or isn't) authentically reproduced elsewhere.
More generally, I can understand consumer protections that focus on the nature of the product itself, but where the product comes from is irrelevant. If the goal were simply to make sure that Feta always tastes like "authentic" Feta, then the regulations would focus on ingredients, process and the final product. But regulations about where the product is produced exist because producers want to exclude competition. Lawmakers do, of course, argue that they're just trying to protect consumers, because that's what they have to do in order to justify the policy, but the goal is obviously to help Greek cheese-makers, French viniculturalists, etc.
Greece was just an example, hence the “say” it’s not close to my favourite.
My point stands, there is a huge gulf in the US and Canada, UK (smaller experience with local feta there but it wasn’t good) etc. I wouldn’t support a GI limited to Greece , edited to clear that up.
I suspect we are making compatible points - you that other countries exist that make good feta by default (true!) - me that countries exist where the default is not good (at least to my taste) and definitely distinguishable from the former category (also true).
I guess feta is a good example of the problem of defining these things by region not process. I feel pretty confident that "feta" shouldn't belong to any one country in the region with a tradition of making it; on the other hand differentiating it from cheap knock offs also makes sense to me.
> I guess feta is a good example of the problem of defining these things by region not process. I feel pretty confident that "feta" shouldn't belong to any one country in the region with a tradition of making it; on the other hand differentiating it from cheap knock offs also makes sense to me.
The PDO for feta protects a cheese made in Greece that's traditionally called feta. Other countries around the Mediterrannean and in Eastern Europe make similar (but not identical) cheeses but they call it by different names, for example Sirene in Romania (which is made with cow's milk rather than sheep and goat's milk as in Greece).
I don't think it makes sense to mix up the protection for feta with protections for sirene, for example. Sirene should be protected by a PDO specific to its own make, ingredients and characteristics.
Just because lots of cheeses around the area look similar to feta, doesn't mean we can just lump them all together with feta. Otherwise, why not lump Roquefort together with Gorgonzola and Stilton? They're all blue cheeses made in Europe, after all.
My point is mainly that these are producer protections masquerading as consumer protections.
I would have no problem with a definition of "feta" that focused on things like the ingredients, process or qualities of the resulting cheese. Those are the sorts of things that a law intended to protect consumers would focus on. Instead, the EU defines "feta" by region (with some ingredient and process requirements as well), which is simply an attempt to benefit producers. I just want a bit of honesty about what these sorts of laws are intended to achieve.
In my opinion, the "feta" geographical indication is a particularly absurd case, since "feta" is just the modern Greek name for a type of cheese that's been produced throughout the Balkans and in Turkey since time immemorial. Greek cheese-makers are lucky that their name for the cheese became international (as opposed, say, to the Serbo-Croat name for the cheese), and now they're cashing in on it.
The "problem" is that typically when there is a strong food brand, it also has a strong geographic association, and so TSG is available only for lesser brands.
In NL they sell feta and next to it a product called white cheese. It's not the same and much cheaper but in [more complex] meals where the cheese is not the dominant flavor you wont notice the difference. Say a salad made of large chunks of feta, 1/4 tomatoes, q-cumber, onion, oregano, salt, black pepper, vinegar and olive oil. I would use the traditional product. If the chunks are smaller and the salad has 10 more ingredients the white cheese will do just fine.
I need to be able to tell the difference tho. My interest seem to be aligned with the producers.
> If the goal were simply to make sure that Feta always tastes like "authentic"
Feta, then the regulations would focus on ingredients, process and the final
product. But regulations about where the product is produced exist because
producers want to exclude competition.
This is not true and you don't know things as well as you think you do. PDO
regulations absolutely focus precisely on ingredients, process and the final
product.
For example, PDO regulations for feta stipulate, among other details, that it
must be made with sheep's milk with the addition of up to 30% goat's milk and
that the milk must come from animals born and bred in the Greek regions of
Thessaly, Thrace, Epirus, Macedonia, Central Greece, Peloponse and Lesvos, from
the breeds adapted to the area and reared by traditional methods. The fat
content of the milk must be at least 6% w/w and the pH of the milk before the
cheese is made must be at least 6.5. The milk must be made into cheese at most
48 hours after milking. The finished cheese must be aged for at least two months
in brine containing 7% NaCl w/w. The final product must be a cheese
"distinguished by its slightly acid and salty taste and its properties of mild
lipolysis" (lipolysis imparts a piquant taste to cheese), with a maximum water
content of 58%, minimum fat content of 43%, and 2% salt in water. There are more
detailed instructions here:
So the PDO regulates the provenance of the sheep milk, as well as the location
the cheese is manufactured, but obviously the focus is on the quality and
organoleptic characterisics of the ingredients in the specified territories,
and that because the same characteristics are not reproducible in different
territories (for example because the breeds of milk producing animals are
different and the flora they feed on, and therefore the soil bacteria that
flavour this flora, are different).
I also note that most "feta" cheese made outside Greece is actually made with
cow's milk. For example, this was the case with French, German and Danish "feta"
before Greece successfully defended its PDO and it is still the case today for
feta made in the US. I'm not sure about Australia, but it's probably the same
there. In Greece, cheese made in the same way as feta but with cow's milk is
called "telemes" and is also a PDO cheese.
As far as I can tell, no "feta" cheese made outside Greece has the piquant taste
imparted to cheese milk by lipases, that characterises Greek feta.
> PDO regulations absolutely focus precisely on ingredients, process and the final product.
Lots of food types that are not geographic indications have strict requirements on ingredients, process, finished product.
The geographic restriction for "feta" serves no purpose except to favor the producers who lobbied for the geographic indication. You could strip off the geographic restriction, and you'd have a normal food quality regulation.
> I also note that most "feta" cheese made outside Greece is actually made with cow's milk.
Feta cheese has been made throughout the Eastern Mediterranean for ages, primarily using sheep's and goat's milk. There's nothing particularly special or distinctive or uniform about Greek feta. The historical reason why the geographic indication is limited to Greece is that it was created by the Greek government (i.e., it was a protectionist measure passed by the government to benefit its own cheese-makers). Greece then lobbied the EU to adopt the geographic indication. That's why the PDO is limited to Greece - not because what the Greeks call "feta" is different from cheeses produced in the same way right across the border in Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria or Turkey.
> There's nothing particularly special or distinctive or uniform about Greek feta.
So you insist, but it's clear to me you do this without any substantial knowledge of feta, or the similar cheeses made around the area, other than what a quick googe could tell you.
In truth, it takes rather more than a quick google to realise that what you say is wrong. The other cheeses that are similar to feta and made in the Balkans, Turkey, Romania, etc, are almost always made primarily with cow's milk, sometimes with added goat's milk. Why? Because cow's milk is cheaper. Why? Because cows produce a lot more milk than sheep. Individual cows produce double or triple the amount of milk of individual sheep and cows can be milked all year round whereas sheep are only milked between February and September.
Even in Greece, non-PDO cheeses made in the style of feta (or other PDO cheeses like kasseri) are made with cow's milk, again because it's cheaper because it's more plentiful. More precisely, those non-PDO cow's milk cheeses made in Greece with cow's milk are made with cow's milk imported from nearby countries that have substantially larger dairy cow herds than Greece.
Greeks make most of their cheeses with sheep and goat's milk (pretty much every single Greek PDO cheese is a sheep and goat's milk cheese, except for Metsovone, St. Michali, Kopanisti and Graviera Naxou and the latter two can also be made with sheep and goat's milk). This is actually a very stringent restriction and it gives an easy advantage on price and profitabilty to cheeses made with cow's milk, which is why the most common adulteration of Greek PDO cheeses is with cow's milk imported from Bulgaria, Turkey, etc.
So basically what you say is completely wrong. Greeks are forced to make their cheeses according to the PDO regulations. Everyone else is free to make theirs any old way they want. That's why Greek feta is different than other cheeses in the region. It's the market forces.
You keep making assumptions based on incomplete knowledge of the cheese market and then you state these assumptions with great certainty, even though they are completely wrong. Please don't do that, that's just spreading misinformation.
More generally, I can understand consumer protections that focus on the nature of the product itself, but where the product comes from is irrelevant. If the goal were simply to make sure that Feta always tastes like "authentic" Feta, then the regulations would focus on ingredients, process and the final product. But regulations about where the product is produced exist because producers want to exclude competition. Lawmakers do, of course, argue that they're just trying to protect consumers, because that's what they have to do in order to justify the policy, but the goal is obviously to help Greek cheese-makers, French viniculturalists, etc.