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Australia and EU on verge of striking free trade deal long stalled by beef, parmesan and prosecco
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
36 points (100.0% liked)
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I appreciate your fervour, and I too want Australia and the EU to grow closer and to have a strong foundation of middle powers and free democracies.
Just a short idea about "you can call it parmesan made in northern Italy". You might want to look up, where the city of Parma is located, from which the cheese gets its name.
I don't think our countries' relationship should break on this rock. But just my perspective: I think it's a battle of culture vs. capitalsm. To the people of Parma, the Parmigiano cheese means quite a lot. If I found out, there was a big cheese maker in my area, I honestly would rather he represented my region in the name, than some Italian region to get a bit more profit.
Why would you think I need to look anything up?
I think you're right that capitalism is involved. But the capitalists are the ones rigidly trying to enforce one of the most ludicrous types of intellectual property. If someone says "parmesan cheese" or "champagne", I don't care where it was made. I care about the qualities of the product itself. Which can be made anywhere. All that happens when they restrict it is they're artificially supporting businesses in one area by giving them a state-sponsored monopoly on an entire class of product.
It's not super different from trademarks. And while I'm not necessarily in favour of the total abolition of trademarks, I am in favour of legal genericisation being much, much easier. Velcro, frisbee, and bandaid, for example, are so obviously genericised now in practice, they should be legally. Words like parmesan and champagne are no different. Indeed, geographic indicators are always like this, because they by definition can't be limited in the way a true trademark is.
If the people of Parma believe their parmesan is superior, they should be able to survive by calling it "parmesan made in Parma". And if they didn't want their region's name to be part of the generic name for the product...they shouldn't have insisted on conflating their region with the type of cheese in the first place.