‘Gruyère’ becomes a generic name in United States

5 comments
  1. Correction: it had *already* been a generic name for ages in the US. A court now rejected a challenge to that (completely legitimate) status quo.

    This is really nothing noteworthy, it happens all the time, also in Switzerland. [Emmentaler](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmentaler#Geschichte) isn’t a protected designation origin either. Nor is [Appenzeller](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appenzeller_%28K%C3%A4se%29#Vermarktung).

    In Europe Gruyère is protected because customers *expect* it to come from a specific region. This is good. But the same expectation hasn’t existed in the US for ages (probably ever).

Leave a Reply