Funny I always use Grana Padano because I'm poor now I will start saying is because I support OSS

A bit over 2.

I assume it's like the whole Champagne only comes from Champagne. Are their other sparkling wines that taste as good, I'm sure. But they want to sell a name.

Kentucky tried to do the same with Bourbon Whiskey, saying if it was made outside of Kentucky you'd have to call it something else, but I don't believe that stuck

if it's cheese, it's real, lol- like "fake boobs are real enough, if i can touch them they're real" but the whole point of DOC or whatever regional protections Europe puts in place I think are about supporting the economies of the region as much as guaranteeing authenticity... the microchips make sense in that context... if someone can fake a wheel of parmesan and disrupt the supply, it will affect demand for the legitimate product and take a customer away from the region the DOC/DOP was meant to protect in the first place. Or just ignore me, honestly I don't have a dog in this race and I'm not even 100% sure I'm right

I would rather buy the cheese without microchips

to be fair that wheel in the picture is $1000+. i imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to make a shitty fake one at a fraction of the cost that looks exactly the same, sell it for the same $1000+, and no one but a connoisseur of high end cheese would be able to taste a difference

That only increases the barrier for entry into the market, but doesn't make it impossible to counterfeit.

The only time such a scheme would work is if the cost of counterfeiting the tags is higher than the cost of turning a counterfeit operation into a legitimate one.

And even then, it'd be better to use hologram seals on packaging or embedded into the cheese crust instead of "edible RFID". Most crusts aren't even edible so it seems more like a gimmick than anything else.

So: more sinister explanations acrually hold more weight here.

It's probably something like an RFID tag that you can scan to check if the cheese is authentic.

The problem with parm is that "fake parm" can just be literally the exact same product, but just made outside the borders of the legally defined region, or even made within the region with the same methods, but not under the control of "big cheese". It can still be a high quality product.

Counterfeit honey is a big problem. Honey is mostly glucose and fructose, which you can just buy. You can detect a lack of the pollen you'd expect in real honey, but that only makes it so that you can thin out real stuff. There's other methods to detect it, but it's on ongoing arms race. Buy honey from local beekeepers you trust, if you can. P.s., there idea that local honey helps with allergies is bunk because allergies are typically caused by windborne pollen, which bees dont collect.

Maple syrup has similar issues.

Seafood and truffles are commonly "fake", as in substituted with cheaper stuff.

Not "counterfeit", but a similar problem in Mexico is that the cartels have gotten into the avocado industry.

mods this one right here

i don't care what you do with your cheese behind closed doors and i will fight to the death for your right to do it but please be less creepy about it