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Labels of origin for food, the new economy and opportunities for rural development in the US

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Abstract

This paper draws upon the events surrounding two small United States Department of Agriculture-funded projects in order to explore some preliminary ideas about the influence of corporations in US policy-making through federal advisory committees created by the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act. Following a synopsis of the political controversy created by the efforts of these projects to generate more discussion of geographical indications in the US, this paper outlines a path for further analysis of the relationships between members of advisory committees to the US Trade Representative and a newly established non-profit, the Consortium for Common Food Names. After a brief discussion of two worlds of geographic indications defined on the one hand by key principles of terroir and on the other hand those embodied in US Patent & Trademark Policy, the paper concludes with short discussions of two approaches for bringing geographic indications into federal and state policy discussions.

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Notes

  1. http://www.rodneystrong.com.

  2. http://www.kj.com/winemaking-philosophy.

  3. http://michiganfoodways.org/index.shtml.

  4. http://extension.missouri.edu/cuisines/about.shtml.

  5. http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/quality/schemes/index_en.htm.

  6. http://mississippiriverhills.org/about.htm.

  7. A Michigan-French Partnership to Strengthen the Global Competence of Students, Researchers, and National Educators in Agriculture and Tourism (USDA 2009-51160-05469 CSREES).

  8. http://www.commonfoodnames.com/about-us/.

  9. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/intergovernmental-affairs/advisory-committees.

  10. There are 6 ATACs: (1) Animals and Animal Products; (2) Fruits and Vegetables; (3) Grains, Feed and Oilseeds; (4) Sweeteners and Sweetener Products; (5) Tobacco, Cotton, Peanuts, and Planting Seeds; and (6) Processed Foods. See http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/advisory-committees/agricultural-policy-advisory-committee-apac.

  11. Consistent with William P. Browne’s (1988) observation, we have little or “no research that provides extensive data linking the representation of private interests to their specific public policy involvement… little is known about which organizations actively represent particular interests, issues, and policies”.

  12. See https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/05/03/2010-10273/meetings-of-the-agricultural-policy-advisory-committee-for-trade-and-the-agricultural-technical#p-3.

  13. http://www.commonfoodnames.com/.

  14. Also see Deffontaines (2005) who observes, “the production of the product quality cannot be dissociated from that of the landscape quality. The product evokes the landscape that promotes the product. At the same time, the landscape evokes the product that contributes to identifying the landscape”.

  15. This discussion draws largely from http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/geographical/protection/index.jsp.

  16. http://aop.uark.edu/.

  17. Core conditions: territorial area defined and delimited; history of socio-cultural traditions and food habits; specific crop variety, animal breed or product identified; specific growing, breeding/raising, preparation practices specified; enabling conditions: legislative and regulatory recognition; collective organization and cooperative action of producers, processors and others.

  18. As Albert Einstein is often quoted: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” (http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/EinsteinQuotes.html).

  19. See also the concept of a “basket of goods” in Pecqueur (2001).

  20. http://www.organicvalley.coop.

  21. http://www.thegrandvision.org/food-farming-network.

Abbreviations

AOP:

American Origin Products

APAC:

Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee

ATAC:

Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee

CCFN:

Consortium for Common Food Names

GI:

Geographical indication

MRHA:

Mississippi River Hills Association

USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture

USPTO:

United States Patent & Trademark Office

USTR:

United States Trade Representative

WTO:

World Trade Organization

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies, Michigan State University, 326 Natural Resources Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Jim Bingen

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  1. Jim Bingen
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Correspondence to Jim Bingen.

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Paper presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society (held jointly with the Association for the Study of Food and Society & the Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition), at New York University and The New School, in New York City, June 2012. It is dedicated to the memory of Terry Shafer, MSU Librarian; Susan Houghton, Michigan Organic Farmer, and Josh Posner, Agronomist, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Appreciation is given to Elizabeth Barham for use of her story and for helpful comments. This paper was not subjected to the journal’s standard peer review process.

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Bingen, J. Labels of origin for food, the new economy and opportunities for rural development in the US. Agric Hum Values 29, 543–552 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-012-9400-z

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