Consumers’ and Producers’ Expectations and Gains from Geographical Indications

Chapter 2

Consumers’ and Producers’ Expectations and Gains from Geographical Indications: Towards a Conceptual Context Thanasis Kizos Department of Geography, University of the Aegean, University Hill, Mytilini 81100, Greece

Chapter Outline 1. Different Types of Designation of Agri-Food Products in Europe and the World 2. GIS from the Supply Side: Reasons for Adopting GI Schemes

31

3. GIS from the Demand Side: Why Consumers Want More GI, the Role of Traceability 43 4. Discussion of the Pros and Cons and the Way Ahead 44 References 45

41

1 DIFFERENT TYPES OF DESIGNATION OF AGRI-FOOD PRODUCTS IN EUROPE AND THE WORLD A number of different and often contradicting developments have transformed production and consumption patterns of food in the western world in the last few decades. Some of these developments are related with the production side and others with consumption. Those that refer to production are linked with the “modernization” of agriculture, that is, transforming agriculture from a family and small-scale activity into an industrial one, mechanized and intensive. This paradigm was successful in reducing costs and producing larger quantities of food and made standardized and uniform products available to an increasingly international market “de-spatializing” and “de-socializing” food. Despite many safety and quality issues that are discussed later, this paradigm is still dominant in many areas of the world and dominates to a large degree the global policy agenda. At the same time Comprehensive Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-59562-1.00002-5 © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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though, a number of food safety crises have questioned the ability of this paradigm to produce safe food. Moreover, according to the modernization paradigm, the goal of farmers was to produce as much as possible at a small price and sell at a high one. But, besides issues of food quality and safety, these notions have been questioned due to negative impacts on animal welfare, the environment and nature. On the consumption side, a growing number of consumers have turned away from standardized and mass-produced products due to safety concerns, but also due to a desire to re-localize food, as the industrial food system has moved away from local systems and local food and in general to know what they place on their table. Local, regional and traditional cuisines have also been brought to the forefront again in an attempt to re-introduce “wholesome” and “traditional” foods and recipes. Finally, the “traceability” of foods and of nutritional substances has also brought changes to the way the food is produced and marketed, albeit many times in favour of mass products that are “fortified” with nutrients against “wholesome” foods (Nestle[1] provides a historical context and discussion on these so-called techno-foods). This turn towards healthy, local and traditional agri-food products has been approached using the notion of quality. Quality is a complex, socially constructed and varying between different products, individuals, countries and cultural contexts notion, which entails some grade of excellence of one or more characteristics of a product over similar products [2]. There are different dimensions of quality. Quality attributes for agri-food products relate to [3] safety, taste, special ingredients, particular production methods, environmental or animal welfare standards often resulting from local expertise and traditions, processing, preparation, presentation and labelling. These attributes can be grouped into the “intrinsic” quality [4] of a product, that is, the quality of materials used, the area of production, the nutritional value, the recipe, etc., and the “symbolic” quality, that is, the quality attributed to a product due to cultural, ideological or symbolic associations that build consumer attraction towards it. Although “intrinsic” quality seems to be “objective” compared to “symbolic” quality, it can also vary significantly over space and time. A typical example is the clear distinction of quality between “safety” and “locality” or “tradition”. Many definitions of quality are linked with food safety, traceability and, in general, with issues of production processes. On the other hand, quality is also understood in a much wider context linked to sensorial characteristics of products, geographical and human environments and their specificity/typicity, tradition and locality [4]. Another typical example over time refers to cheese quality. In the light of safety and after the 1950s, milk pasteurisation before cheese making was considered as a necessary step for higher “quality” cheeses. But recently, this

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notion has been challenged and higher “quality” is linked with taste, texture and aroma, qualities which cheeses from pasteurized milk are considered to be lacking. In order to make it easier for consumers to buy quality products, a number of quality certification schemes have been introduced. There are, in general, three types of certifications and their corresponding designations: l

l

l

Certification of quality in the production process, usually with the application of certain restrictions, with the most common designations being organic products and integrated management. Organic production systems are systems where all inputs should be “natural”, with no use of chemicals, while integrated management systems include a wide variety of systems where the use of chemical inputs is kept as low as possible and the end products should comply with certain residual restrictions. Certification of quality from safety during production, typically with some form of control checks in critical points of the standardization or processing process. The most common designations include the ISO and HACCP protocols. Certification of quality from geographical indications, which are analysed in greater detail.

According to this idea, food quality can be signified through the association with particular places or regions and/or local or particular modes of production. These are defined as Geographical Indications (GIs) in the World Trade Organization’s 1994 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (article 22, [3]): “indications that identify a good as originating in the territory of a Member, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin”. In the EU, legally registered GIs are of three types today1: Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) is according to Ar. 2 of EU Regulation 2081/1992 [5] “the name of a region, a specific place or, in exceptional cases, a country, used to describe an agricultural product or a foodstuff originating in that region, specific place or country” for which “the quality of characteristics of which are essentially or exclusively due to a particular 1. A former category for quality wines produced in specified regions (QWPSRs) categorised to Designations of Origin of Superior Quality (DOSQs) for dry wines and Registered Designations of Origin (RDOs) for sweet ones, currently replaced by PDO and PGI respectively by Regulation 479/2008. In this regulation, PDO wines are defined as those the grapes of which come exclusively from this geographical area and its production takes place in this geographical area. PGI wines are defined as those for which at least 85% of the grapes used for its production come exclusively from this geographical area; its production takes place in this geographical area and it is obtained from vine varieties belonging to Vitis vinifera or a cross between the Vitis vinifera species and other species of the genus Vitis.

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geographical environment with its inherent natural and human factors, and the production, processing and preparation of which take place in the defined geographical area”. The possibility to non-EU countries to register their products as PDOs (and PGIs) was granted recently and was used by a growing number of countries, some in Europe such as Andorra or Albania and some from Asia or America. Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) which is “the name of a region, a specific place or, in exceptional cases, a country, used to describe an agricultural product or a foodstuff originating in that region, specific place or country. . .which possesses a specific quality, reputation or other characteristics attributable to that geographical origin and the production and/or processing and/or preparation of which take place in the defined geographical area”. In the ongoing debate on the new “quality policy”, the definitions of PDO and PGI are altered and the mention to “production, processing and preparation” in the area is replaced by “the production steps of which all take place in the same defined geographical area” for PDOs and “the production and/ or processing and/or preparation of which take place in the defined geographical area” is replaced by “at least one of the production steps of which take place in the defined geographical area”. This seems to endanger the former systems of registration by introducing a more relaxed system of registration criteria and already the Economic and Social Committee (2011/C 218/22) and the Committee of the Regions (2011/C 192/06) have questioned this change [5]. Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) for products which are “traditional and have a specific character” distinguishing it from the foodstuffs of the same category through: “use of traditional2 raw materials in production of a foodstuff, or traditional composition, or mode of production and/or processing reflecting traditional methods”. The main difference between PDO, PGI and TSG designations is that TSGs are designed to allow high-quality products that are not necessarily linked to a geographic area to be differentiated from other products, mostly “authentic products that are a part of the EU’s cultural heritage” (Fact Sheet: European policy for quality agricultural products). Practically, this means that if a typical production process of an agricultural product or a foodstuff includes (a) raw material, (b) processing and (c) standardization (e.g. maturing, bottling and second processing), then to

2. ‘Traditional’ means proven usage on the EU market for a time period showing transmission between generations; this usually means a minimum of 25 years (Fact Sheet: European policy for Quality agricultural products, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 006EC quality policy, available at http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/publi/fact/quality/2007_en.pdf [accessed 10/02/2012]).

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characterize it as a PDO, all three stages should take place in the designated area, while for PGI, the first two stages should take place in the designated area and the third stage can take place elsewhere. TSGs are not linked with particular areas but reflect a recipe or a method that could be applied to any area. The adoption of these schemes reserves the use of the name exclusively to the operators that comply with all the requirements of the specifications (including the geographical delimitation) and protects them against (Regulation 510/2006, ar. 13): “(a) any direct or indirect commercial use of a registered name. . .; (b) any misuse, imitation or evocation. . . even for expressions such as “style”, “type”, “method”, “as produced in”, “imitation” or similar; (c) any other false or misleading indication as to the provenance, origin, nature or essential qualities of the product. . .; (d) any other practice liable to mislead the consumer as to the true origin of the product”. These certification schemes have been widely accepted, although uneven, among EU countries. On the 1st of September 2004, there were 669 products in the EU-25 (385 PDOs and 283 PGIs [6]), while by the 26th of January 2009, the number increased by 22% to 820 (453 PDOs and 367 PGIs [7]), 80% of which (655) PDO and PGI products come from the five southern countries: France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal. After the enlargement to 27 countries, the number of registered products has risen again to 1032 (plus 36 TSG products), 533 PDO and 499 PGI, out of which 74% come from the five southern countries (Table 1), with eight more products registered to non-EU countries, including six Chinese ones. Fifty-one products were approved in the beginning of 2012 (Table 1) and for another 161 applications were filed, 9 of which from non-EU countries. For wines, 1334 wines are registered as PDOs in EU countries and two more from non-EU countries, 587 registered as PGIs from EU countries and 378 from non-EU countries (Table 2). The majority of registrations come from two countries, France and Italy with 65% of the overall registrations. Distribution of value of registered products is even more uneven. According to the EU impact assessment on geographical indications study [8], six Member States concentrate 96% of the value: Italy representing 33%, Germany 25% and France 17%, followed by the United Kingdom, Spain and Greece. The study goes into more detail [8]: “In Italy, cheese represents 3/5 of the total value of production, and showing a growth over the years. Meat products (30% of total value) and olive oil do not show any particular growth neither in value or volume. . .The value of production of German PDO and PGIs is mainly due to the importance of beers sector followed by pastry and meat products. Dairy is the most important PDO/PGI sector in France, with 50% of the total turnover, although the volume and value of production is decreasing. Fresh meat and processed meat products (including foie gras) are progressing, while the other categories are stable. In United Kingdom the value can be attributed to three names: Scotch Beef, Welsh Lamb and Scottish Farmed

TABLE 1 PDO, PGI and TSG Products in EU and Non-EU Countries Per Status of Application Registered TSG

Review Completed

PGI

PDO

Total

%

TSG

6

8

14

1.3

5

3

13

1.2

PGI

PDO

Application Total

TSG

PGI

Total PDO

Total

N

%

EU Member States Austria Belgium

5

1

1

0.1

Cyprus

1

1

0.1

1

1

Czech Republic

21

6

27

2.5

1

1

Germany

51

29

80

7.5

5

5

13

Denmark

3

3

0.3

2

2

2

14.6

3

3

Spain

3

69

84

156

Finland

3

1

4

8

105

83

188

17.6

4

21

17

40

3.7

2

Greece

25

69

94

8.8

1

1

2

Hungary

5

4

9

0.8

1

2

3

Ireland

3

1

4

0.4

88

149

239

Great Britain

Italy

2

2

14

1.1

1

0.1

1

3

0.2

3

31

2.4

17

102

8.0

2

7

0.6

14

26

185

1

1

9

3

3

7

1

1 2

1

1

11

0.7

22.4

1.1

1

Bulgaria

France

14

4

14.6 0.7

7

2

9

23

34

229

18.1

2

4

8

4

16

58

4.6

1

4

5

101

8.0

1

1

2

14

1.1

4

0.3

10

11

6

17

266

21.0

Lithuania

1

Luxembourg

2

2

1

0.1

4

0.4

Latvia

3

4

6

0.5

4

0.3

1

1

0.1

1

1

10

0.8

1

36

2.8

15

131

10.3

3

5

9

0.8

Poland

9

16

7

32

3.0

Portugal

58

58

116

10.9

Romania

1

0

1

0.1

Sweden

2

3

1

6

0.6

Slovenia

3

4

3

10

0.9

Slovakia

2

7

9

0.8

Slovakia - Czech Rep.

4

4

0.4

Total

37

1069

1

1

1

533

1

0.0

The Netherlands

499

1

100.0

1

2

3

1 1

1

10

1 3

2

1

2

4

5

3

2

5

1

27

18

47

14

69

69

1

0.1

7

0.6

20

1.6

10

0.8

4

0.3

152

1268

100.0

1

1

4.8

2

10

47.6

1

4.8

Non-EU Member States Andorra

1

China

3

Colombia India

3

6

75.0

1

1

12.5

1

1

12.5

2

2

Morocco Thailand

1

1

2

1

1

2

9.5

1

1

1

4.8

2

2

3

14.3 Continued

TABLE 1 PDO, PGI and TSG Products in EU and Non-EU Countries Per Status of Application—Cont’d Registered TSG

PGI

Review Completed PDO

Total

%

TSG

PGI

PDO

Application Total

TSG

Turkey Vietnam Total Total

37

5

3

8

504

536

1077

Source: DOOR database 01/2012, processed by the author

100.0 2

1

1

3

1

4

30

19

51

14

Total

PGI

PDO

Total

N

1

1

2

2

9.5

1

4.8

6

3

9

21

75

72

161

1289

%

100.0

TABLE 2 PDO, PGI and Wines with a Name of Origin for EU and Non-EU countries.

EU Countries

Wine with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)

Austria

25

Belgium

7

Bulgaria

Wine with a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI)

Third Countries

Wine with a Geographical Indication (PGI)

Albania

36

4

Australia

72

52

2

Bosnia and Herzegovina

7

Cyprus

6

4

Canada

7

Czech Republic

6

2

Chile

57

France

450

160

Montenegro

9

Germany

13

26

South Africa

153

Greece

28

111

Switzerland

37

Hungary

34

13

United States of America

Italy

412

120

Brazil

Luxembourg

5

Malta

2

Netherlands

Total

Wine with a Name of Origin

Wine with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)

696

1 1

378

696

2

1 12 Continued

TABLE 2 PDO, PGI and Wines with a Name of Origin for EU and Non-EU countries.—Cont’d

EU Countries

Wine with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)

Wine with a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI)

Portugal

69

18

Romania

52

18

Slovakia

46

5

Slovenia

14

3

Spain

111

43

United Kingdom

2

43

Total

1334

587

Source: BACCHUS database 01/2012, processed by the author

Third Countries

Wine with a Geographical Indication (PGI)

Wine with a Name of Origin

Wine with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)

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Salmon. Turnover under PDO/PGI is thus equivalent to the value of production of EU Fresh fruit sector or the turnover of Danone (12th in worldwide food industry ranking). In Spain, the main sector is fruit and vegetables, with fluctuating volumes. The Spanish meat sector progresses slowly, and stays the most important PDO/PGI beef sector in the EU. Cheese sector is decreasing, while meat products are progressing steadily but constantly. In Greece the most important sector is dairy, followed by olive oil, covering only 2% of the total value of Greek olive oil production”. The comparison of the study of the importance of production under PDO/ PGI with the value and volume of the production of the overall sector was possible only for some sectors: for cheese the percentage was 9.2% of volume, for meat products <3%, for fresh meat and poultry 0.05% with high variability; for fruits and vegetables 0.44% of the total volume, for beer 7.35%, for olive oil 1.8% and for butter 1.5% of the production of EU-27. Even in southern countries, the distribution of registered GIs is uneven. According to Parrott et al. [9] “quality” agri-food products are associated with marginal and/or peripheral regions in terms of their suitability for industrial and mechanized agriculture because “such regions have, for a variety of reasons, failed to fully engage with the productivist agricultural model” [10]. Parrot et al. [9] acknowledged that 70% of PDOs and PGIs in EU 15 have as designated less favoured areas (LFAs), namely areas where agricultural production faces restrictions due to natural handicaps, including climatic conditions, altitude, steep slopes and low soil productivity among others. Vakoufaris and Kizos [10] found that 54 of the registered GIs up to 2009 in Greece (48% of the total) were produced exclusively in LFAs and 96% were produced in LFAs and non-LFAs. They also found that the size of the delimited areas varies: some of the products are characterized by large or by very small delimited areas (e.g. the area for Feta PDO cheese is 114,379 km2, while for the olive oil Thrapsano PDO only 11 km2). In such areas, in the southern countries, these products have never ceased to be produced and were always linked to particular places and societies [11], unlike most of the productivist hot-spots in northern and southern countries [12]. In this chapter, consumers’ and producers’ expectations and gains from GIs are presented. First, the supply side is discussed and the reasons for producers to adopt GI schemes, followed by the demand side and why consumers want more GI, with a focus on the role of traceability.

2 GIS FROM THE SUPPLY SIDE: REASONS FOR ADOPTING GI SCHEMES Why should producers adopt one of the aforementioned GI schemes? There are a number of answers, some of which are related to the characteristics of the geographical areas and other to the characteristics of their producers. The inception of the scheme by the EC assigned a number of goals, many of which were related with producers of GIs, others more directly to areas and

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others to consumers. In this section, only the supply side goals are discussed, which include preserving the economic value produced by the European agrofood sector, encouraging the diversification of agricultural production so as to achieve a better balance between supply and demand in the markets, promoting products which allow the improvement of the income of farmers and for retaining the rural populations in less-favoured or remote areas. Most of these goals revolve around the issue of the added value of the products and who receives this value. For certified products, there are indications that they can improve the incomes of farmers through the localization of production [13]. This localization can potentially be translated into retaining a greater part of the value added by eliminating intermediaries that typically receive an important part of the overall value of a product or by creating rarity and scarcity that theoretically can increase the price and again in theory provide greater value to producers ([14,15], e.g. the case of the PDO Roquefort cheese, [16]). Since in many cases these products are produced on traditional small-scale farms in traditional ways and in traditional landscapes, they can be used to sustain the traditional way of life and landscapes of Europe’s marginal farming areas [17]. Other social benefits include the preservation of traditional knowhow, cultural as well as culinary tradition. The continuation of farming in those marginal areas can be considered an environmental benefit in itself [3]. An important issue refers to the organoleptic characteristics of GIs. Although the definition of specific character does not involve direct mention of differences between GIs and “conventional” products in their organoleptic characteristics, research has demonstrated that for a variety of products and regional cases such differences are indeed found. Today, the Codes of Practices for most if not all PDOs do not refer at all to such organoleptic characteristics, even in cases where such a mention could be easily established. This can be related to the fact that many similar products typically present similar characteristics but also due to poor research and documentation. The need to document these differences and establish links between such characteristics and “quality” is growing and this book is in part a reflection of this need. Currently, most of the research in the area refers to the growing importance of GIs, short food supply chains (SFSCs), organic production, localization, but also international movements, such as Fair Trade, Alternative Food Networks [18,19] that have lead to the emergence of alternative food geographies [9,20,21]. These geographies refer to changing production and consumption relations and result in new regional and local food complexes. According to Murdoch et al. [22] areas that have largely remained marginal to industrialized agriculture are the very areas where quality production might thrive. But, the use of many binary opposites, such as local food/global food, SFSCs/long food supply chains does not agree with the hybrids and more complex situations of real life [23], where business and areas can produce both “local” and “global” food, both of “high” and “low” regional quality, etc. GIs and PDOs/PGIs are also very much linked with such binary concepts

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due to their diversity on one hand, as products such as Roquefort or Feta or Parmesan are put in the same category with very locally produced and available products. In Section 4, this is developed further.

3 GIS FROM THE DEMAND SIDE: WHY CONSUMERS WANT MORE GI, THE ROLE OF TRACEABILITY From the demand side, the reasons why consumers choose to buy GIs and especially PDOs and PGIs are many including supplying high-quality products to consumers, encouraging the diversification of agricultural production to achieve a better balance between supply and demand and providing clear and succinct information on the geographical origin of the products in order to help consumers in making their choice. The last issue is raised more often by consumers and researchers and refers to the “visibility” of the scheme, that is, of the awareness of consumers on the existence and rationale of the certifications. This involves a number of interconnected issues including: the degree of knowledge of the certifications, the degree of trust that consumers place on these certifications and the price they will be willing to pay to buy them. The degree of knowledge of the scheme is not very high. According to a Eurobarometer survey, at the end of the 1990s, most of EU citizens appear to not know PDO and PGI designations (87% and 90%, respectively, provided negative answers, [24]). Even when the signification of these acronyms was explained, the level of awareness rose only slightly as “80% of those polled said they had never seen or heard of “Protected Designation of Origin” (against only 14% who had already seen or heard of it)”, while the level of awareness “of “Protected Geographical Indication” was even lower (86% had never seen or heard of it and 8% had)” [24]. Moreover, the study indicates that EU citizens are not informed either of what these labels refer to. When asked which label guarantees that the main ingredients come only from the specific region of production, only 15% answered that both do, 28% said that PGI label does, 24% that PDO label does and 28% could not give any answer. When asked which label guarantees that all the stages of production take place in the specific region of production, only 21% answered correctly that only the PDO label guarantees it, compared to 29% for the PGI label, 15% for both and as much as 30% that did not know, mostly Irish, Portuguese, British and Spanish consumers. When asked which label guarantees that there are very strict quality controls, respondents were evenly shared between PDO (25%) and “both” (24%), while more than one-third could not give any answer. Finally, when asked which label guarantees a certain quality level in the product, 26% were convinced that both do, 24% said it is only the label and a relative majority could not give an answer to the question [24]. Another important finding of the survey was that 46% of EU citizens admitted that they “would have more confidence if the European Union were to guarantee the origin of a food product” [24]. Major differences were recorded among

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Southern and Northern countries, with confidence being significantly higher in the Southern ones (more than 59% for Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy compared to 58% of “not more confidence” 58% in Denmark and 51% in Sweden), reflecting the existing differences in the adoption of the scheme presented in Section 1 of the chapter. These findings have lead to questioning the effectiveness of the scheme and of promotion campaigns [8]. The degree of trust to these certifications is another issue of great concern for producers and authorities that seek to promote their products. If consumers do not receive any information about a product or regard this information as unreliable, they typically do not trust claims on quality and do not buy it. Theoretically, the adoption of the PDO/PGI scheme aimed to fill this gap and provide consumers with guaranteed information on an important aspect of quality. However, since the degree of knowledge of consumers on the scheme is low, the degree of trust is also low. The two issues mentioned above are related with the nature of the products included in the scheme. Most if not all of them are produced in relatively limited areas and their scale of production is low, especially when compared with “conventional”, mass-produced products. Therefore, since the majority of consumers in Europe today lives in urban areas and shop from supermarkets, it is not surprising that they may not be familiar with such products, with some notable exceptions (e.g. Feta cheese, Roquefort cheese, Parmesan cheese among others). But, typically such exceptions are known to consumers anyway and not as PDOs or PGIs. In the following section, this very important issue is discussed in more detail.

4 DISCUSSION OF THE PROS AND CONS AND THE WAY AHEAD From the discussion so far, PDOs and PGIs are placed conceptually “in the middle” between producers of the products and the designated area. Although the scheme primarily concerns areas and the basic feature of the products is that they are delimited in space, all these products are produced by certain producers and therefore their “success” and their impacts on the delimited areas and in the end their overall evaluation is very much dependent on the number, the choices and practices of the producers as well [21]. This issue has also been analysed in detail by Belletti et al. [3] that develop a very detailed scheme for the evaluation of the impacts of GIs across their chains. They use a framework of “three orders” of effects: first-order effects capture the immediate results of creating the GI framework at both national and international levels, especially in terms of number of registered GIs with evaluation areas such as the diffusion of the GI scheme; the use of the registered GIs and producer awareness. Second-order effects are immediate and stem from the implementation of the GI framework by firms, analysed with reference to abuses/imitations of the registered product, consumer awareness and satisfaction. Third-order effects are the more general consequences

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of adopting the GI framework. For GIs, effects on rural development, social and environmental issues are normally considered. Therefore, the assessment of the overall economic and social impacts of geographical indications on their delimited areas needs to address the following issues: (a) the economic success of the product in the market, usually indicated by a higher market price compared to similar products; (b) the scale of production, as economically successful products produced in small quantities have only marginal impacts on their delimited areas, while others may be less successful but have greater impacts due to their large production scale which involves more people in the area and (c) the distribution of value along the supply chain, as some successful products may have very limited impacts on their delimited areas if the greatest part of this success is yielded by extra local actors (e.g. super markets). The higher price of a PDO means little for its producers in the delimited area when their profits are small and the largest share of the end-price is reaped by the super markets. The comprehensive review of the literature from Paus and Reviron [25] confirms these considerations on the impacts of GIs to both the supply and demand side. They add a fourth dimension, the degree of awareness of the scheme from consumers, especially in the biggest markets in Europe today, the big urban centres. The low degree of awareness of the scheme cannot be “compensated” by large promotion campaigns alone. In fact, the current situation can be seen as a proof that such campaigns are not very effective anyway. Given the fact that GIs are small-scale products by definition, using some “markers” for the promotion (e.g. PDO Parmigiano Reggiano) of the scheme can be seen as equally ineffective, since these markers are known to producers anyway. It would seem that a combination of strategies is necessary, with one of its dimensions being the positive differentiation of PDOs on the basis of one or more “intrinsic” features of their quality. Today, GIs and especially PDOs are renowned mostly for the fact that they are associated with particular areas. But, as research indicates and this collection aims to bring forward, many already “possess” some unique or special qualities due to their production specifications, the features of the delimited areas or a combination of both. Some of these organoleptic characteristics could be used as differentiation criteria of specific character and quality between them and “conventional” products. The establishment of such differences through research and documentation is required to establish links between such characteristics and “quality”.

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The Social and Legal Framework of PDO

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