The NZ Specialist Cheesemakers Association and the Dairy Companies Association are concerned the extensive framework surrounding geographical indications proposed by the EU could limit future use of common cheese names by New Zealand cheese makers.
“We would be concerned if the trade agreement started to remove choice for NZ consumers. Our cheese makers have spent years developing their products and brand identities,” cheese association spokesman Mike Hannah said.
Dairy Companies’ executive director Kimberly Crewther said the Europeans’ GI agenda has intensified in recent years and now extends to a broad range of cheese names that are globally generic, rather than geographically unique in nature.
“In pursuit of commercial advantage for European producers the EU is ignoring common food heritage to extend protection to cheese names that have been produced and traded between many geographies for decades.”
There is a lot at stake for the NZ dairy industry with exports of $2 billion worth of cheese exports a year.
NZ also has a diverse and growing community of specialist cheese makers, some of whom have used common cheese names on the local market for decades.
“The potential costs of losing the opportunity to use common cheese names are wide-ranging in terms of loss of investment, intellectual property, rebranding and relabelling. But it is more difficult to see how NZ consumers or even EU producers will be better off under this scenario,” Hannah says.
“Locally made cheeses like havarti, halloumi and gouda are no longer strongly associated with European locations.
“There are long family and company heritages behind many local NZ specialty cheeses. This history has been the foundation of the dynamic and innovative cheese making we are seeing today.”
They urged the negotiators to work towards agreements that will comprehensively remove barriers and distortions from global dairy trade rather than creating new ones for NZ producers.
“The EU and NZ are both major dairy exporters so there is an opportunity in the EU-NZ free-trade agreement to agree something quite significant for global dairy trade and policy,” Crewther says.
