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Portrait of Protected designation of origin

General knowledge · Food & drink

Protected designation of origin

EU scheme created 1992

Food and drink — geographical indications and the law of the place name

The strictest of the European Union's three food quality schemes, under which a name may be used only for a product whose every stage of production, processing and preparation happens in one defined area, using recognised local know-how. It sits alongside the protected geographical indication, which requires only one of those stages to be local, and the traditional speciality guaranteed, which protects a method rather than a place. The system was created by a regulation of 1992, borrowing the logic of the French appellation d'origine contrôlée, and now covers thousands of names from Parma ham to Melton Mowbray pork pies.

How to spot them

  • ▸Three tiers: the strictest requires every stage in the named area
  • ▸A red-and-yellow roundel on the label; the middle tier carries a blue-and-yellow one
  • ▸Built on the model of the French appellation d'origine contrôlée
  • ▸The reason Stilton cannot legally be made in the village of Stilton
  • ▸The reason Greek producers won feta and Belgian brewers got Gueuze protected by method instead

Key facts

Council Regulation (EEC) No 2081/92, which gave the European Community its first food-name register (1992)

It created the two geographical tiers; a sister regulation the same year created the method-based tier.

A blue cheese that may be made only in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire — and therefore not in the Cambridgeshire village it is named after (1996)

Stilton: the village lay on the Great North Road and sold the cheese, but never made it.

A raised pork pie from Leicestershire, whose makers won the middle tier after a long fight in 2009 (2009)

Melton Mowbray pork pie — protected geographical indication, so the pork need not be local.

A crimped semicircular pasty whose filling must be chopped or minced beef, swede, potato and onion, assembled west of the Tamar (2011)

The Cornish pasty, protected geographical indication; it may be baked elsewhere.

The European Court of Justice ruled in 2005 that a white brined cheese's name was not generic, to the fury of Danish producers (2005)

Feta — reserved to Greece, one of the most contested rulings in the whole system.

A spontaneously fermented Belgian beer protected for how it is made, not where

Gueuze — a traditional speciality guaranteed, so it may in principle be brewed outside Brussels.

An olive oil from the Peloponnese where the fruit, the pressing and the bottling must all happen in one Greek region

Kalamata — the Commission's own worked example of the strictest tier.

Key ideas

  • The three tiers answer three different questions. Where was it made, in full? Where was it made, in part? And is it made the old way at all? Only the first two attach a name to a map.
  • The point is anti-generic: once a name is registered it can never become a common noun, which is why the fight over feta, and over cheddar, matters so much commercially.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Protected designation of origin requires every stage of production, processing and preparation to take place in the defined area
  • •Protected geographical indication requires only one of those stages to be local; for wine, at least 85 per cent of the grapes must come from the area
  • •Traditional speciality guaranteed protects a recipe or method and is not tied to any place
  • •The schemes were introduced by Council Regulation (EEC) No 2081/92 and its companion 2082/92, later consolidated in Regulation (EU) No 1151/2012
  • •A single unified registration procedure across food, wine and spirits came into force on 13 May 2024 under Regulation (EU) 2024/1143
  • •Blue Stilton and White Stilton were among the first British names registered, in 1996, along with West Country Farmhouse Cheddar and Jersey Royal potatoes
  • •Cheddar itself is not protected — only West Country Farmhouse Cheddar is — so cheddar can legally be made anywhere in the world
  • •The Court of Justice upheld Greece's exclusive claim to the name feta in October 2005
  • •Champagne's protection rests on the older French appellation d'origine contrôlée system, formalised in 1935, which was the model for the European scheme
  • •After Brexit the United Kingdom set up its own parallel registers, using the same three categories and its own logos

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