>bad imitation (often with the wrong process and/or ingredients).
But who is to decide? Imagine if the same thing happened to hamburgers or endless other common things. although understandable the reasoning is already flimsy when it's a region but when it's applied to generic names which have been around for a very long time then who is to decide?
For example, I come from Melbourne in Australia where we have the world's third biggest Greek speaking population after Athens and Thessaloniki. Many came before Greece's entry into the European Communities. Feta means slice, "φέτα", so they can't sell a slice of cheese in the EU, made perfectly in the traditional manner, calling it a slice in their own language as they have always done? They are Greek citizens (as well as Australian), they speak Greek, they've been making that cheese since forever I can't see how you can retrospectively then say people can't call it that. As with the case of the Croatian wine, it's vandalizing history and existing linguistic practice.
In Europe it's easy: the region that created AND named the stuff is to decide.
>Imagine if the same thing happened to hamburgers or endless other common things.
It already happens, just not in a regional level but a corporate one. You cannot call your burger a "Big Mac" or "Baconator".
Also remember that the names we're talking about are not generic as "hamburger", but specific. Feta is a specific product, whereas the analogous to your hamburger example would be if a region has a monopoly on "cheese".
>Feta means slice, "φέτα", so they can't sell a slice of cheese in the EU, made perfectly in the traditional manner, calling it a slice in their own language as they have always done?
Feta is the word for slice, but is also a specific name for a specific cheese -- not to be confused.
(The fact that they are Greek citizens doesn't play any role, the right for Point of Origin protection went to Greece, not Greeks in general. Else any company worldwide could hire some Greeks or some French, and say it makes Feta or Champagne, etc).
>they've been making that cheese since forever I can't see how you can retrospectively then say people can't call it that.
Well, that "forever" is merely a century or less, since most of them weren't longer than that in Australia. Compare this with over two millennia of Feta tradition in Greece.
In any case, it's an EU law to protect the regions that create specific stuff and the consumers. Without it our supermarkets would be full of crap sold as "X", made for cheap in some foreign country with no quality control, and sold as genuine X.
We love our original, and quality/origin protected food a lot to let that happen.
But who is to decide? Imagine if the same thing happened to hamburgers or endless other common things. although understandable the reasoning is already flimsy when it's a region but when it's applied to generic names which have been around for a very long time then who is to decide?
For example, I come from Melbourne in Australia where we have the world's third biggest Greek speaking population after Athens and Thessaloniki. Many came before Greece's entry into the European Communities. Feta means slice, "φέτα", so they can't sell a slice of cheese in the EU, made perfectly in the traditional manner, calling it a slice in their own language as they have always done? They are Greek citizens (as well as Australian), they speak Greek, they've been making that cheese since forever I can't see how you can retrospectively then say people can't call it that. As with the case of the Croatian wine, it's vandalizing history and existing linguistic practice.