In Treasure Island, Ben Gunn wistfully moans,”The long night I’ve dreamed of cheese — toasted mostly.” Clifton Fadiman noted in his 1957 Any Number Can Play,” Yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality.” If only they knew what would happen.
Anyone fascinated by food and related anecdotes would do well to monitor the European Union negotiations. Last week I touched on the Italo-Spanish war of posturing over olive oil, which led one Frenchman to claim, “obviously the oil of France is best, otherwise we’d export it.” Hah, they’re all lucky the Americans don’t enter the olive game.
At any rate, the Greeks have just won a major cheese victory. The EU ruled that only Feta from Greece can use the name Feta. Well, the Danes are particularly up in arms as they produce most of the Feta, or at least used to. While the Greeks concede that Denmark produces a real good Feta substitute, the Greek E.U. minister also pointed out, “Only Feta from Greece is worth a taste.” It reminds me of that old childhood claim “my shoes are faster than yours.”
Now just like the olive oil issue, this is serious business. Denmark is one of the world’s largest cheese producers making not only their native Costello, Christain IX, and Danish Blue, but also top quality cheese originating elsewhere, such as Feta. Also, Denmark doesn’t do much else besides remarket Hans Christian Anderson over and over again. Big money is at stake.
This cheese ruling also worries Finland, which produces Fontina (Italy), and now Denmark, Germany Switzerland and the Netherlands are all posturing about who invented Emmentaler and Tilsit. The Norwegians, safe with their Noekkelost, have proposed that Havarti be neutrally Scandinavian.
If all this cheese business seems a bit odd the side effect is even weirder. A mad nationalistic race is on for whose product becomes the Euro-Sausage. In a classic BBC Yes Minister episode our hero becomes Prime Minister for being least objectionable and then for making a patriotic speech declaring, “Britain will never allow its sausage to be ruled by the European Community. Would they have us all eat salami for breakfast?” In another case of life imitating T.V., this satirical bit from T.V. has become a real life political issue.
How does this affect us good Americans? Not one whit. The U.S. is by far the largest producer of cheese in the world. And, like Denmark (Number 2), we don’t just make our native cottage, cream, and Monterey Jack cheeses, we produce all varieties worth selling no matter what the country of origin. The U.S. is undeniably the cheese super-power and we make the rules. Of course, we can’t produce Pecoino Romano but Kraft makes enough Wisconsin Romano for the industrialized world — two different cheeses really.
This is not like Champagne vs. California Sparkling, Brie from Wisconsin says Wisconsin Brie. Granted Gouda is a place name but cheese is made by style not by appelation.
As for sausage? In Europe sausage is made by as many small shops as there are video stores in the U.S. There are no dominant producers. Actually, U.S. brand name sausage has a 70 percent or so market share in Europe. The difference is no real American wants to sell sausage to just his neighborhood, but rather to every man, woman and child on the planet. We just think bigger than the Europeans.
I say we put our minds to olive oil. We could make enough good quality stuff to really upset the E.U.