Having backed the US catfish industry in its campaign to prevent Vietnamese catfish from being called what they are, US trade officials are complaining about a new plan by the EU to crack down on name usage. The BBC reports that Brussels is taking a list of 35 food and drink names to the WTO meeting in September that the EU claims ought be restrictively used. The EU would say, for example, that you can’t make prosciutto in Virginia or Gorgonzola in Wisconsin. But it would also apply within the EU: “the Swiss village of Champagne, which has turned out its own - non-bubbly - red and white wine for 800 years, has been up in arms about being prevented from using its own name.” The US position? “The European Union is asking the US government, US producers and US consumers to subsidise EU producers... so that EU producers can charge monopoly prices for their products,” says Jon Dudas of US Patent and Trademark Office. But the when US does the same, it goes by another name entirely—like intellectual-property enforcement.
