Unique food products in the EU can be protected to preserve local food traditions.
Protection becomes like a local monopoly.
It is no longer possible to move the production to another place or another country - or to change the original recipe.
- It will be a collective protection that benefits producers on site, says Pontus Elvingsson who is a state inspector at the National Food Administration.
In Sweden, for example, Skåne skewer cake, brown beans from Öland and Kalix roe have such protection.
- The idea is to counteract the fact that genuine local products are streamlined.
You want to protect local differences in the food.
Diversity instead of simplicity, says Pontus Elvingsson.
In 2021, two consultants have helped organizations and companies to apply for such protection free of charge.
During the first months of the year, 24 applications were submitted.
These are local unique Swedish products that can now be protected from recipe changes and where production cannot be moved.
SPECIAL: When the local cheese from Boxholm started to be produced in Östersund, the inhabitants of the small municipality took up the fight for their place name.
See the story of the Boxholm uprising on the special page here.