Their names have rolled off the tongue for generations — cornish pasty, cumberland sausage and Melton Mowbray pork pie, made in Leicestershire, central England — even as their heritage and identity were “borrowed” by business imitators.
Not for much longer. Early next year, the pork pie will formally win the EU’s legal protection against its name being taken in vain. The pasty and sausage should get their rewards soon. Other local foods are joining the queue, from Craster kipper to Somerset Levels native breed beef.
The Melton Mowbray pie was the first British recipe-prepared product — rather than specialties such as cheese or cream — for which local makers sought protected status, sparking a dispute with a large manufacturer. Opponents of protection argue it is bad for competition and threatens jobs in other parts of the UK.
Britain has been slow to use the EU scheme, despite BSE and foot and mouth felling suspicion of mass production, while regional specialties have won greater recognition.
Only 37 British names are registered, with another 45 in the process of applying. Italy has more than 170 (most famously Parma ham and Gorgonzola), France 160, and Spain and Portugal well over 100, all taking advantage of 1992 regulations putting the law on the side of local food makers. More than 800 food and drink names across the EU are protected.
Irene Bocchetta, of Food from Britain, a consultancy established by the UK government, said: “In Italy, if you are a food producer, you have to become a member of a local food organization. But in this country we are famous for being fiercely independent. There seems to be an inherent mistrust amongst farmers. That can make it difficult in getting them together to approach a scheme that can make them stronger as a group.”
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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