Senior Staff Writer, Masaru Yamada
Traditional food products which are unique to certain regions have to be protected from counterfeiting. One of the systems used to safeguard such products is the protection of geographical indications or GI. In Japan, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry has been working on legislating GI protection since last summer, but the procedure has been dead-locked by conflicting interests among the government. Without being able to unravel the tangled situation at home, Japan went on to negotiate separately with the United States and the European Union, which have totally opposite stances regarding GI protection, and are stuck between pressures from both sides.
“One of the most important issues in our negotiations with Japan for an economic partnership agreement is strict GI protection,” Nikolaos Zaimis, trade section head of the EU delegation to Japan, told The Japan Agricultural News in April in Brussels, Belgium, where Japan and the EU held the first round of negotiations on an EPA. “If that is not ensured, our member nations, especially the ones with many food products subject to GI like France, Italy, Spain and Greece, will not accept the outcomes of the negotiations,” Zaimis said.
Zaimis explained that the EU is strongly demanding that Japan, as well as legislating GI protection, raise the standard of GI protection of foodstuffs in general, including cheese, to the same level as that for wines and spirits.
The EU has many regions which traditionally produce wine, cheese and meat products, and has taken the lead in intraregional GI protection. It examines and registers geographical names as brand names so that the names cannot be used by other regions. The EU claims that internationally, many countries have GI protection systems for wines and spirits but the systems for other food products are insufficient.
The EU, therefore, has eagerly asked its counterparts in multilateral and bilateral negotiations on free trade agreements and EPAs for stricter GI protection. Japan is not an exception.
On the other hand, countries such as the U.S. and Australia are strongly against strengthening GI protection. In these countries, food products are mainly developed by immigrants from European countries. Such food products are often named after places in Europe where they originated from, and they fear that stricter GI protection will give adverse effects to exports of these products.
In an interview with The Japan Agricultural News in late March in Washington, Jaime Castaneda, senior vice president for trade policy of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, which heads the anti-GI protection campaign in the U.S., cited as an example the situation in South Korea.
“South Korea accepted stricter GI protection in its FTA with the EU, and as a result, U.S.-produced cheese can no longer be sold in South Korea under such names as Feta or Gorgonzola,” Castaneda said. “Since the EU is offensively negotiating on GI protection, we are asking the U.S. government and Congress to work on preventing further occurrence of such a situation.”
Amid growing demands from industries, the U.S. government plans to take up GI protection as an important issue of concern in the bilateral negotiations with Japan on non-tariff barriers which will be held in parallel with the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade talks. In the Japan-U.S. joint statement announced on Friday, April 12, the U.S. states that it will address the issue of protecting prior trademark rights obtained by U.S. firms and safeguarding the use of generic terms so that they will not become subject to GI protection, in an apparent move to restrain Japan from introducing EU-style GI protection.
Opposition from within the government
The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry’s study group of experts on GI protection last summer compiled a report draft on a possible introduction of GI protection systems in Japan. The ministry asked the opinions of industries in Europe, the U.S. and Australia and obtained their consent. They were about to submit a bill to the Diet, but faced unexpected opposition from within the government.
The Cabinet Legislation Bureau and the Patent Office raised objections to the ministry’s draft, and the plan to submit a bill to the Diet in January was never carried out. “Our future prospects are unclear,” an official at the ministry’s new business and intellectual property division said. Some sources say that the bill fell victim to a territorial conflict among different ministries and agencies, such as the Patent Office which administers the regional collective trademark system.
While the government is stumbling over ironing out of different opinions, it has set out to negotiate for an EPA with the EU and for participation in the TPP talks. “It has become even more difficult for Japan to proceed with the issue of GI protection, as it is torn between the EU which calls for stricter GI protection and the U.S. which is against such a move,” a government official said.
Domestic circumstances should be given the top priority
When the agriculture ministry disclosed the report draft last summer, the U.S. and Australia accepted it without any problems. “At first, we were worried that the draft will be more inclined toward the EU stance, but actually it substantially reflected our demands,” one of the two governments’ officials said. The ministry was also optimistic about receiving support from foreign countries as long as it properly notifies the World Trade Organization, but circumstances in the international community have changed drastically since then.
GI protection is aimed at supporting local communities’ production of traditional products through letting consumers choose and purchase unique food products and letting producers receive adequate income in exchange. The Japanese government should be allowed to develop its own way of GI protection, taking into consideration other factors such as protecting the scenery of the communities and their ecosystems.
The problem is that discussions on the issue within Japan are being distorted by external pressures. Especially in the case of the TPP talks, where negotiations are mostly conducted secretly behind closed doors, it will become difficult for Japan to decide on its stance domestically.
<What is GI protection?>
Geographical indication protection is a system to safeguard brand products produced in and named after certain regions, based on the idea that the characteristics of traditional agricultural products and processed food are deeply rooted in the climate, soil and manufacturing method of the regions that they originate in. The system can help improve the value of regional brand products and vitalize rural communities. Well-known examples are Bordeaux wine of the Bordeaux region of France and Parma ham of the Parma region of Italy. In the European Union where GI is strictly protected, public institutions check to see whether products meet the various geographical and quality criteria for using the protected indications, and the governments ban imitations. Meanwhile, as for Japan’s regional collective trademark system, geographical criteria are not subject to protection and are entrusted to each organization’s self-imposed rules. The World Trade Organization agreement strictly protects GI for wines and spirits, but protection of other foodstuffs has been insufficient. For example, in Japan, it is prohibited to use the name “Bordeaux-style wine,” but the name “Parma-style ham” is allowed.
(May 4, 2013)