QUALITY BETWEEN TERRITORY, TRADITION AND INNOVATION: AN ANALYSIS ON PDO-PGI AMENDMENTS. THE CASE OF CHEESES

The legal protection of Geographical Indications (GIs) helps producers to safeguard their products against imitations by defining common quality standards while highlighting the geographical origin and specificity of their products. At the same time, legal protection is often a premise for activating collective action and to develop collective marketing strategies aiming at adding value to their products Despite the extensive GI literature, there are few studies which provide insights into the modifications to product specifications (PSs) of PDO-PGI products after GI protection. The aim of this paper is to understand where and when the amendments to PSs in the EU occurred, what was amended (e.g., geographical area, product quality), the direction of the phenomenon (more flexible vs more restrictive PSs), and justifications given by producers for amendments. The paper analyses all PSs amendments approved, going in depth into the 1.3 cheese category. The EU DOOR Website documented all European registered GIs, namely, 1,276 and the total amendments approved (n= 251 non-minors and n=94 minors) by the 30th of October 2016. As for the research activity based on the analysis of all amendments approved for the product class 1.3 cheeses according to the EU DOOR Database (2016), there are 225 PDO-PGI products registered in the class 1.3, over 1,276 amendments (82 of them major ones) until October 30, 2016. The first results show how diverse forces push producers and other actors to change the rules initially set in order to pursue different objectives between two opposite extremes: preserving and/or strengthening the identity of the GI product and its link with the territory on the one side and simplifying rules to allow for the lowering of production costs and higher market penetration on the other.