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(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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First, things like Parmesan cheese are as much cultural products as they are commercial products, so calling parmesan to something done outside of that cultural context is cultural appropriation - you can make parmersan style cheese but you have the moral duty to make it clear it's not the actual thing. Second, a free market is only a free market if there's transparency about the products, including their origin.
Do you see how silly that argument is?
It's coagulated milk, the only culture is the bacteria. This isn't a family recipe being made in a farmstead by 5 people who personally milk the cows themself. It's a factory. With rows upon rows of cheese produced every day, worth millions of $. Stored in giant warehouses and transported all around the world. It's big business, not culture. Just because they have great marketing doesn't mean they're producing any form of culture.
The same applies to the Scottish whisky trade and Champagne in France. If it's so cultural then locals would be making the stuff, but they're not, it's a large monopolistic business. In the same way the scotch whisky trade is becoming monopolised by the likes of Chivas via Pernod Ricard.
If you genuinely believe that this is cultural appropriation then you should be having a word with the giant corporations that have put so much legislation around these products that it's near impossible for small independent competitors to try their hand at it. If it were truly culture there would be a thriving craft scene like there is with beer.
There is a thriving craft cheese scene. I'll walk down to my local farmers market here in Northern Italy later and there are a handful of stalls selling various cheeses. If that isn't happening wherever you live, it's not bacause of the rules about Parmeggiano labeling.
Perhaps I'll also pick up a bottle of one if the "metodo classico" bubblies since the Champagne is way over priced. There is a nice wine-by-the-litre place on the way back.
Nobody needs to be stealing each other's labels.
Various cheeses or various parmigianos?
The discussion isn't about cheese as a concept but about a very specific type that has used legislation to create a protectionist monopoly.
I can walk down to the local whisky shop here in northern Scotland and choose from various whiskies. But it's only an illusion of choice. Despite the romantic marketing and harkening back to the founding origins it's nothing but factory made mass produced goods now. It's big business, not culture. Our ignorance of the ease of manufacture and our love of romanticism is used against us in marketing in order to justify a higher price poifnt. The same applies to Parmigiano (and not Parmeggiano, unless your Italian is of the Texan dialect).
Is anything stopping you from making your own and selling it at 90% of the price? Other than the decade plus that it takes...
a) joy to you for spotting my spelling mistake.
Here in N. Italy I don't have a wide variety of Parmigiano, regardless of spelling, but a good variety of hard cheeses of both cows and sheeps milk. They don't claim to be from Reggia di Parma because that would be a lie. Beyond the local ones, there are the grana Padano and there is the Sardinian guy who has various ages of Peccorino Sardo. Can't remember if there is much Peccorino Romano around. They have lots of that down in Rome.
So... yes, there is lots of cheese around. Up here we don't get much of the small producer Parmigiano, which gets sold at the markets down in Emilia Romagna. Almost by definition, for me, much less you, to ever see a sliver of it, it has to be from a big producer. Or you can have a locally made grana and it might even be good. That producer is just going to have to build their own reputation and not freelode on someone else's.
Various different types of Parmigiano are available indeed. Some are made in large factories while other ones are made by a couple brothers with some cows. The culture is indeed there, which does not mean such a cheese can not be replicated or even made better somewhere else. Indeed, if you buy Parmigiano outside of Italy it is likely that what you're buying is coming from a large production facility. However in Italy it is not uncommon to have small productions serving just a few villages.
However, regardless of this, counterfeit products are a problem for this system. Counterfeit products are not necessarily worse, however do not need to comply with the same quality standards which are in fact required in the production of Parmigiano. Allowing counterfeit products to be sold, especially in Italy, would likely drive out the production of proper Parmigiano and eventually result in a quality degradation.
After all, Parmigiano tends to be a cheap product; don't be a dick and buy the real thing. I believe price increased recently, but I still see 36 months aged Parmigiano for about 15 €/kg while in Spain it is common to pay 10-15 €/kg for fresh cheese.