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I haven't seen a lot of people in the US defending companies passing off mislabeled products.

As for your yogurt example, perhaps it's because it's less important to those of us who live really far from Greece. It might not even be desirable to have yogurt that was shipped halfway around the world!

Is it yogurt made from Greek people? Is it yogurt made by a Greek company located in Spain? Yogurt made from Greek dairy, outside of Greece? Yogurt made in Greece from Italian milk? Yogurt made in Greece from Greek milk, but in the Australian style? I can think of all kinds of reasons folks half a world away would care much more about what style the product is, than would care about where, precisely, it was produced.

Of course, when you're in a trade union with a country that has a vested interest in having a monopoly on a product, obviously they're going to be pushing semantics in order to come out on top.

For those of us not so close to Greece, having to call it Greek-style yogurt is just more word soup. (also, this happens all the time in the US; the 'Greek' would be written really large and then 'style' in much smaller letters)

OTOH, it's pretty clear-cut in the case of a product that claims to contain a natural ingredient, but have none of it, and not even have any semblance of the benefits of the actual product.



> perhaps it's because it's less important to those of us who live really far from Greece

I'd argue this isn't true. Greek yogurt has distinct style and ingredients which, when I buy Greek yogurt, I expect in my yogurt. Anything else is not what I want to spend my money on. It's like feta cheese. Real feta cheese is made from sheep's milk and not cow. It's completely different if made from cow's milk (not the same taste nor texture).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feta#Certification


But you're not disagreeing. You're saying that the recipe is important, not the geography. That's the same thing rconti said.


"Italian sausage" -> no one assumes it was actually made in Italy

"French wine" -> everyone would assume it was actually made in France

I don't know if there's a hard rule that anyone can come up with about this sort of thing.


Ok, but if someone was selling "Arkansas beef jerky" that was actually made in Texas, I imagine that would be a problem,no?


Is it a problem if Buffalo wings are made outside Buffalo, New York? Do you expect Canadian bacon to be made in Saskatchewan? Should Manhattan clam chowder be made in Manhattan? Are french fries imported from France?

(I always thought "Greek" was a style of yogurt.)


Probably not, unless they are claiming it's a product of Arkansas. Like your example above about Italian sausage, it's a categorization of style of food, not a product from a specific locale.


Yeah, there are things out there that are called "Philadelphia Cheesesteaks" that amuse and alarm people from Philadelphia, but no one has (sincerely) suggested outlawing them.




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