Italy is to step up the fight against
Italian sounding food fakes, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told
the AGM of food federation Federalimentare in a videolink with
the Cibus fair on Tuesday.
The government's plan for the extraordinary promotion of Italian
products this year "envisages action to defend brands and
quality and origin certifications , and to fight Italian
sounding products" like Parmesan, he said.
Di Maio said that "damaging practices, like Italian sounding
(products), have reached worrying proportions, especially in the
agri-food sector".
The Italian foreign ministry, he said, was engaged in "an
intense action of combating the counterfeiting of Italian goods
on a global scale".
In 2008 The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said Germany broke
European Union rules by allowing the name 'Parmesan' to be used
for a German cheese that mimicked Italy's glory Parmigiano
Reggiano.
Parmigiano Reggiano has the EU's Protected Designation
of Origin (PDO) status.
The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has had to become
increasingly assertive in defending its product's name from
improper use.
It first scored a key legal victory several years ago when
it managed to stop an American cheesemaker from using the
Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese.
This was the fourth time in ten years that a US company
had been forced to remove the label from its product.
In 2003, Italy lobbied to have cloned American parmesan
denied permission to export worldwide.
The US product later failed in its bid to be admitted to
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO)
Codex Alimentarius.
Parmigiano Reggiano continues to be sold in cloned
versions in South America, Japan and Britain, while in France
'parmesan' refers exclusively to the Italian cheese.
In Brazil a pirated version is marketed as Parmesao,
while Argentina calls its fake parmesan Regianito.
Online sales of classic Italian food and wine produce are
booming but buyers should be careful of scams, a recent study
warned.
The sale of fake goods usually divides into two broad
categories, the study noted.
Firstly, there are goods that bear fake quality labels
implying they have been manufactured to certain standards.
This is apparently a particular problem for Parmigiano
Reggiano cheese, which has been plagued by those inferior clones
over the years.
The second category covers items labelled as coming from
one geographical area but which actually come from another
place entirely, such as a Pompeian olive oil made in
California.
The imitation of Italy's prime food products is on the rise
despite efforts to ban inferior clones, the Foreign Trade
Institute (ICE) said recently.
'Italian-sounding' products now rake in some six billion
dollars in sales while the genuine articles only make about
two billion dollars, said ICE, presenting the results of a
survey of North American specialty food stores carried out
with the Parma Chamber of Commerce.
Some 97% of 'Italian' pasta sauces and 76% of canned
tomatoes on the North American market are bogus, ICE said.
The USA is now churning out 1.7 million tonnes of
imitation cheese including 1.3 million tonnes of mock
mozzarella, 120 million tonnes of pretend provolone, 111,000
tonnes of phony ricotta and 60,000 tonnes of pirated
parmesan.
Gorgonzola is sold as Cambozola in Germany, Austria,
Belgium and Britain, where it is a favourite with foodies.
Australia tries even harder to camouflage the name with
its Tinboonzola.
Two other cheeses, Asiago from the far north and Robiola
from Emilia, are respectively cloned in Wisconsin and Canada.
'Danish Grana' can be found on US shelves alongside
American versions of Parma ham and San Daniele ham.
Other fakes include Californian-grown San Marzano
tomatoes and pirated Chianti produced in Australia and the
US.
In Europe, food authenticity standards are more
rigorously observed.
Last year saw a threefold increase in European Union
customs seizures of fake Italian products bearing quality
labels.
Italy has the highest number of EU seals of approval on
its food and drink.
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