Who Renamed My Cheese? The EU. (WTO Alert!)

WASHINGTON - The way Europeans see it, the eggplant parmesan sandwich on the typical American menu is a fraud because that cheese can come only from the Italian city of Parma.

It is more than just a food fight over words, because the European Union is proposing a "global registry of protected names." Hundreds of products, from feta cheese to kalamata olives, would have to come from their respective regions of origin in order to carry their distinct and recognizable names.

If the Europeans succeed, what would the Grande Cheese Co. of Lomira, Wis. - founded in 1927 by an Italian immigrant - rename its parmesan cheese?

"We'd have to go with 'hard-grating cheese,'" says the company's vice president of technology, Tom Everson.

The products on the European Union's list "are usually high-quality, made regionally, and are very important for rural development," said Gerry Kiely, agriculture counselor for the EU delegation in Washington. "We don't want them to be usurped by multinationals or whatever. These products are usually made by small producers who are very dependent on them."

But American producers are also dependent on the names, says the Grocery Manufacturers Association of America, which is working to defeat the proposal.

"It costs billions to make, market and brand a product," said Sarah Thorn, the association's director of international relations. "For our companies, the trademark is the most significant thing about a product."

Consider cheese. Many of the cheeses sold in the United States came from Europe decades ago, said Greg Frazier, senior vice president for international affairs at the International Dairy Foods Association.

"These names are generic," said Grande Cheese's Everson. "The standard of identities for cheese were written in the 1940s."

The European Union has yet to submit a formal proposal to the World Trade Organization. The 15-nation bloc essentially wants to expand globally the application of its own list of roughly 600 protected food names now honored by its member states. That list includes about 150 types of cheeses, most from France, Italy, Greece and Spain.

In Europe, for example, only producers in Greece can call their product feta, even though more feta is produced in Denmark, which has challenged the rule. Other cheeses on the list include asiago (Italy), Camembert (France) and Gouda (the Netherlands).

The WTO already recognizes such "geographical indications" for wine and spirits. The Europeans want to extend the labeling protections to nonalcoholic agricultural products.

U.S. officials contend the proposal is a thinly veiled attempt to subsidize European farmers. The European Union plans to push it at the next round of WTO meetings in Mexico in September, when the United States will press for reductions in European agricultural subsidies.

The dispute is one of many in an escalating trade battle between the two sides of the Atlantic. This month, the United States filed a complaint with the WTO over the EU ban on genetically modified food.

Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, said the European Union, if victorious, probably would seek licensing arrangements rather than outright bans on use of the names.

"A lot of money is at stake - hundreds of millions or billions of dollars," Hufbauer said.

Officials in the U.S. Trade Representative's Office say the United States has a procedure that allows producers to trademark food products that are unique to a particular region. Examples include Roquefort cheese, Swiss chocolate, Stilton cheese and Parma ham.

But the European Union's Kiely said it is too much to expect small producers to obtain and defend trademarks in other countries.

"These individual producers would have to monitor markets and go to court if somebody was usurping their product," Kiely said. "And they're not in a position to do that; they're small operators."

Kiely also rejected the argument that many of the food names Europe wants to protect are generic.

"We have a very comprehensive system," he said. "For example, we have no protection for cheddar. But we don't consider the likes of parmigiano to be a generic product."

"When the Marx Brothers were about to make a movie called "A Night in Casablanca," there were threats of legal action from the Warner Brothers, who, five years before, had made a picture called, simply, "Casablanca" (with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as stars). Whereupon Groucho, speaking for his brothers and himself, immediately dispatched the following letters:

Dear Warner Brothers:

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of the common), named it Casablanca.

I just don't understand your attitude. Even if you plan on re-releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don't know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without your permission. What about "Warner Brothers"? Do you own that, too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as The Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor's eye, and even before us there had been other brothers -- the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (This was originally "Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?" but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one and whittled it down to, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?")

Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well, it's not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks -- there was Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk," and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.

As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks, sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are imposters. I can think of two Harrys that preceeded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn't too well known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.

Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such a confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.

This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows -- perhaps Burbank's survivors aren't too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank's name and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that from your studio emerged "Casablanca" or even "Gold Diggers of 1931."

This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it's not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing at all about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan.

I have a hunch that this attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well -- hot out of law school, hungry for success and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won't get away with it! We'll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin and we'll remain friends till the last reel of "A Night in Casablanca" goes tumbling over the spool.

Sincerely,
Groucho Marx

*For some curious reason, this letter seemed to puzzle the Warner Brothers legal department. They wrote -- in all seriousness -- and asked if the Marxes could give them some idea of what their story was about. They felt that something might be worked out. So Groucho replied:*

Dear Warners:

There isn't much I can tell you about the story. In it I play a Doctor of Divinity who ministers to the natives and, as a sideline, hawks can openers and pea jackets to the savages along the Gold Coast of Africa.

When I first meet Chico, he is working in a saloon, selling sponges to barflies who are unable to carry their liquor. Harpo is an Arabian caddie who lives in a small Grecian urn on the outskirts of the city.

As the picture opens, Porridge, a mealy-mouthed native girl, is sharpening some arrows for the hunt. Paul Hangover, our hero, is constantly lighting two cigarettes simultaneously. He apparently is unaware of the cigarette shortage.

There are many scenes of splendor and fierce antagonisms, and Color, an Abyssinian messenger boy, runs Riot. Riot, in case you have never been there, is a small night club on the edge of town.

There's a lot more I could tell you, but I don't want to spoil it for you. All of this has been okayed by the Hays Office, Good Housekeeping and the survivors of the Haymarket Riots; and if the times are ripe, this picture can be the opening gun in a new worldwide disaster.

Cordially,
Groucho Marx

*Instead of mollifying them, this note seemed to puzzle the attorneys even more; they wrote back and said they still didn't understand the story line and they would appreciate it if Mr. Marx would explain the plot in more detail. So Groucho obliged with the following:*

Dear Brothers:

Since I last wrote you, I regret to say there have been some changes in the plot of our new picture, "A Night in Casablanca." In the new version I play Bordello, the sweetheart of Humphrey Bogart. Harpo and Chico are itinerant rug peddlers who are weary of laying rugs and enter a monastery just for a lark. This is a good joke on them, as there hasn't been a lark in the place for fifteen years.

Across from this monastery, hard by a jetty, is a waterfront hotel, chockfull of apple-cheeked damsels, most of whom have been barred by the Hays Office for soliciting. In the fifth reel, Gladstone makes a speech that sets the House of Commons in a uproar and the King promptly asks for his resignation. Harpo marries a hotel detective; Chico operates an ostrich farm. Humphrey Bogart's girl, Bordello, spends her last years in a Bacall house.

This, as you can see, is a very skimpy outline. The only thing that can save us from extinction is a continuation of the film shortage.

Fondly,
Groucho Marx

*After that, the Marxes heard no more from the Warner Brothers' legal department.*

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