http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2...ausage-bid.php


Butchers blast Slovak sausage bid

Slovakia seeks EU protected status for spekácky as others lay claim to
similar recipes

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007
VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST


"Slovakia is seeking help to protect what it says is its sausage. The
threatened links, called spekácky, have been a staple of Central European
dinner plates for ages but became the subject of a dispute after Slovakia
applied this May for a special European Union protected status for the food.

Slovakia's claim has roiled Czech butchers and meat-product makers, who say
spekácky is also a Czech (and Polish) food and that the Slovaks are being
sneaky in their attempts to claim sausage rights."

At first, our Slovak colleagues kept everything secret and were relying on
us not noticing their application," says Jan Katina of the Czech Meat
Manufacturers Association. "However, we found out." And so, what has been
until now a cultural link between the two societies has devolved into a
sausage war."

Slovak producers are neither morally nor legally entitled to have their deli
meat products registered as so-called Traditional Specialty Guaranteed,"
Katina says.

Aside from questions of moral entitlement to the sausage, Czech officials
say it's unlikely the EU would agree with Slovakia's legal claim.

"There is no logic in it," says Jan Veleba, president of the Agrarian
Chamber. "The protected status is used for specialties of a given region
and . spekácky are produced in the Czech Republic and Poland as well."

Also, Katina says, a food eligible for protected status must have been
produced according to a unified and unchanged recipe for at least 25 years
and can't be used as a generalized name of a type of sausage. Spekácky -
more or less an amalgam of meat, water, salt and spice - are made according
to each individual butcher's secrets.

"We are not able to specify the number of the recipes or how different they
are because the recipes are usually considered the trade secret of
particular producers," Katina says.


High-level diplomacy

The first attempts to regulate the sausages were in the 1960s and 70s, when
Czechoslovak technical standards were established to unify production
processes and recipes in the country's meat industry."

After the fall of communism, these standards were naturally removed and the
newly privatized manufacturing plants started using these now-generalized
names for their own [recipes]," Katina says.

The purpose of the EU stamp is to protect products from imitation and to
help producers market their goods, says Michael Mann, a spokesman for
agriculture and rural development for the European Commission. "It is a
guarantee of quality," he says.

However, Katina suspects Slovakia is abusing this principle for an advantage
in the market.

"The main motive was economic profit," he says. "After both countries
entered the EU, some Czech producers became more visible on the Slovak
market. The local producers were in a natural way pushed out of the market
and this was how the idea of our [Slovak] colleagues was conceived to make
it more difficult for Czech deli meats to go east."

Magdaléna Fajtová, spokeswoman for Slovakia's Agriculture Ministry, says the
move stems from the country's effort to promote the quality of traditional
Slovak foods. "[Consumers] are used to a certain taste and quality," she
says. "All the makers will have to follow the approved way of making these
sausages."

To date, Slovakia has no EU-protected foods, according to a European
Commission Web site. The Czech Republic has six, including three beers,
Budejovické pivo, Budejovický mestanský var, Ceskobudejovicke pivo; one
pastry, stramberske usi; one fish, Pohorelický kapr; and one vegetable,
zatecký chmel.

Petr Habán, spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry, says the Czech Republic
has the highest number of registered stamps from the new EU countries and
that more Czech products - Pardubický gingerbread and Mariánské lázne sugar
wafers - are bidding for protection now.

As for meats, Italy and Portugal hold the most EU-protected stamps. Germany
also has several sausage-related protections.

The EU must make finish examining the spekacky petition by next May.

But, ulitmately, the fate of spekácky is likely to be settled in diplomatic
talks, says Haban.

"Our ministry prefers to negotiate with both [Poland and Slovakia] and we
believe that we will reach some multilateral agreement," Habán says.

However, if Slovakia does succeed in getting protection for its spekácky, it
could cost Czech butchers, who would have to figure out a new way to market
their meats without calling them spekácky.

Frantisek Dolejsí, a Prague butcher whose family has been making the meat
for more than 100 years, has no plans to discontinue production, regardless
of what the EU says.

"We would definitely not stop making them because it is a traditional Czech
product and . roasting spekácky on open fire belongs to the traditional
activities here."

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