The name game interview

Over the past year the Guild of Fine Food has worked with Irene Bocchetta to get the Protected Food Names message out to the speciality food trade. Here, she talks to Guild director John Farrand about how the PFN scheme is evolving.

John Farrand: How did the PFN scheme come about? Did it follow on from systems like Appellation d’Origine Contrôllée?

Irene Bocchetta: The Commission was really looking for ways to support the rural economy across the EU. At first glance, the Protected Names Scheme might seem a long-winded way to go about that. But think about a rural area with a traditional product that not many people are making any more. If you start promoting that product, you create demand, and demand creates more jobs. So that was the economic rationale behind it. And with AOC and DOC, there was already a method in place to create a regional identity for wines, so the Commission was able to pick up that model and develop it for food.

JF: Britain has 37 PFN products. France, Italy and Spain have hundreds. How did we end up so far behind?

IB: In Britain, we’d never really had a single, collective body looking after our indigenous foods and showing pride in them, saying “Look what we’ve got!” Also, a lot of our farming industry had been knocked out during World War II, and when we started producing food again our priorities had changed: we wanted everything to be bland and uniform. But on the Continent, the farming sector never really stopped during the war – there was more continuity.

So when PFN began in 1992-3 and the Commission said to every EU nation, “Give us your brightest and best and we will fasttrack them through the scheme”, countries like France were able to come up with those names straight away, because they had been protecting their national foods for a century. When the Commission said to Britain, “Give us your brightest and best” we only came up with 10!

JF: Perhaps it’s also because the French, Spanish and Italians buy into the EU far more than we do?

IB: I believe that’s true. I also believe that, when the PFN scheme started, there were certain governments that went straight to the EU with a long list because it’s was already in their culture to protect their native foods. And perhaps, at that time, we had a government that saw that kind of thing as industry’s responsibility.

JF: Who is the PFN scheme really intended to help? Is it the producer? The retailer? The consumer?

IB: It’s intended to tick all of those boxes. It’s to protect products that have been made and enjoyed within a community of people for many years and to ensure they continue to be made into the future. Recipes get lost, their foods go out of fashion, and then the skills and the craftsmanship go with them. So you are protecting people’s culture as well as their livelihoods. As a consumer, when you delve into these products you’re eating history and helping its continuation.

JF: You haven’t got big budgets to promote that heritage to consumers, so how are you getting the message out at the moment?

IB: Through media interviews like these, through working with chefs, through speaking to retailers and getting them on board. They’re selling these products already; they’re just not celebrating the fact that these are PFNs. This year we’ll be providing PFN signage and menu stickers to restaurants and, as you know, we’re working with the Guild of Fine Food to get point-of-sale material out to specialist retailers too.

JF: Consumers got rather wrapped up in the word ‘organic’, which became a byword for quality, which was probably wrong because some of it wasn’t good quality at all. With PFNs, you’re saying it’s less about quality and more about heritage – about consumers enjoying the story?

IB: The Commission produced a fact-sheet last year that talks a lot about PFNs and ‘quality’. But I don’t like to talk in those terms. Quality is such a loaded word. To me, this scheme is an opportunity to express each EU member’s culture through its food. It’s not dissimilar to the way we express our culture through art or buildings. It’s your story.

For some shoppers it’s like opting to buy Fairtrade. They might find it difficult to choose between, say, Lavazza and a Fairtrade coffee because they really love Lavazza. But when they read the Fairtrade pack and find out more about the growers and the origins of the product, they might feel they want to support them. And it’s the same if they want to support craftsmanship and heritage.

JF: With three different logos, it’s quite a complicated scheme. Will it be difficult getting consumers to understand it?

IB: I’m aware that we are suddenly all being bombarded with these messages: eat this, don’t eat that, think about food miles. It’s totally overwhelming. What happened to just eating food? My approach has always been incremental. It’s too much to take on board at once, so we are just chipping away at it. What I say is, this is a scheme that will enable us to enjoy this food in the future. It’s protecting the future by protecting the past.

JF: Getting the message out through delis should be relatively straightforward – independent retailers are used to communicating the story behind their products. But its less easy in foodservice, isn’t it, where the chef may be the only person who has got to grips with PFNs?

IB: Absolutely right. We’re currently working with Stockpot, a magazine for members of the Craft Guild of Chefs. All their members will get sheets of stickers of the three different logos that they can put next to items on their menus, and a window sticker showing the logos in more detail. Every chef is already going to be buying Welsh lamb or putting Stilton on the cheeseboard, and they are not going to reprint all their menus just to mention PFNs, so we’re giving them stickers instead. We’ve got to make it easy for them.

JF: Is there any money available for consumer promotions?

IB: There is money – the EU has funds to promote the scheme – but it’s match-funding for promotion by industry, so it needs the producer groups to apply for it. I can’t apply for funding for these proposals myself because I work for a government organisation and unfortunately in Britain there’s no-one like me out in the ‘outside world’.

That’s why Sopexa [the former French equivalent of Food from Britain, now a commercial marketing company] are so good – they’ve got loads of people dedicated to writing these proposals for EU match-funding, which is an art in itself.

In the past, I have worked with organisations like the West Country Cheesemakers Association to encourage them to put a proposal together. But any proposal cannot be sector-specific. Producer groups would have to say, for example: “We are taking a stand at the Fancy Food Show in New York and we would like to use part of it to promote PFNs as a whole.” acciugaacetoaglioamarettoanatra anguillaarborioarmellineasiago asparagobabábaccalaborlotto bottargabresaolabudinoburro caciocavallocaffecalamarocannellino cantuccicapocollocapperocapra caramellacarciofocastagnecinghiale coppacotechinocrescenzaculatello espressofagiolofarinafarrofava fegatofettuccineficofinocchio focacciafontinaformaggiofunghi gallinagamberonegelatognocchi gorgonzolagranapadanogrissino guancialegarganelliindivia lampascionelardolasagnalenticchia limoneluganicalumacamaccheroni maialemalloreddusmandarino mandorlemascarponemela melanzanamentamielemontasio mortadellamozzarellanocciolaoca olioolivaorecchietteoriganoortica ostricapancettapanepanna panzerottopappardelleparmigiano reggianopastierapecorinopeperoni pestopinolipomodoripolenta porchettaprosciuttoprovolonequaglia radicchiorascheraravanelloricotta rigatonirisorobiolarosmarinorucola salamesalesalviasardinasavoiardo scamorzasedanoseppiaspaghetti specksquacqueronestincostracchino tacchinotagliatelletaleggiotarallo tartufotiramasutigellatonnotorrone tortelliniuovouvavanigliaventresca verzavialonenanovinovongolawafer wursteryogurtzabaionezafferano zamponezuccazuccherozucchina

JF: So once again the French are ahead of the game on getting cash from the Commission!

IB: There’s an even distribution of funds throughout the community, but it’s dependent on who applies for it. The pot of money is there but if the UK doesn’t do anything about it, the UK isn’t going to get it. Sopexa are a private company and they are extremely close to French producers.

JF: Does it help that French consumers are much more supportive of their own producers?

IB: My counterpart in France tells me that consumer awareness in France is no better than here. But it’s the producers who are running with it there. I suspect many producers here are completely unaware of these match-funding opportunities. That’s something I want to change this year.

JF: Put yourself into the shoes of a fine food retailer for me. If you owned a deli, what would you be doing in your shop to utilise PFN?

IB: I would just be telling the story of those products all the time. Look at Swaledale cheese: it’s being made to the same recipe today as it was 400 years ago. I find that quite exciting.

To date, Waitrose is the only major retailer to push the PFN message strongly at point of sale, through prominent signage and ticketing on the cheese counter.