There is an Italian cheese that’s good because it’s aged in a cave with constant humidity and temperature. Why can’t these conditions be replicated in another part of the world using technology and science?
In: Earth Science
They can, easily. There are two reasons they don’t:
1) European nations have a long history of protecting the names of certain products from certain regions. For example, the only sparkling wine that can be called “Champagne” in the EU is sparkling wine made from grapes grown in the Champagne region of France.
Grapes grown in the Napa Valley in California are identical to grapes grown in France and it has been conclusively proven that no one can tell the difference between sparkling wine from Champagne, France and the Napa Valley in California. But wines made from grapes grown in Napa Valley cannot be called Champagne in the EU.
The EU has been fairly successful in tying these labeling restrictions to broader trade deals with the block and, as a result, you can’t use a lot of EU specific food terms outside of the EU either.
2) You can get around that – to take sparkling wine as an example – by just calling the product something else that nonetheless conveys what it is. However, other than Champagne a lot of these products with EU enforced geographic labelling are very niche products with essentially no demand outside of a very specific geographic region or demographic.
So if you’re talking about Formaggio di Fossa, the answer is that its such a niche product that there is 0 demand for it outside of a very specific, very wealthy niche. Those people are willing to pay a lot for it – that’s why its become a kind of upper class trend item – and want to buy the “genuine” cheese, not a “knock off.” As a result, there’s basically 0 demand for the cheese as a generic product and so no one is willing to invest the money that would be necessary to set up a production line to duplicate it.
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