The European Union has placed six items of Chinese fresh produce on its official geographical indications list as part of a scheme designed to ensure mutual protection of speciality food products produced in both the EU and China.
The so-called 10+10 project aims to ensure protection on the Chinese market for ten famous European food names, including Agen prunes from France and Grana Padano cheese from Italy, while at the same time affording the same kind of status to ten of China's products.
The six Chinese fresh fruit and vegetable products on the list are: Pinggu da tao (Pinggu peaches), Guanxi mi you (Guanxi honey pomelos) and Shaanxi ping guo (Shaanxi apples), which have been granted PDO status; and Dongshan bai lu sun (Dongshan white asparagus), Jinxiang da suan (Jinxiang garlic) and Lixian Ma shan yao (Lixian Ma yams), which become part of the PGI scheme.
These have been added to more than a thousand agricultural products and foodstuffs that are protected in the EU – among them 13 non-EU geographical indications – and, as a result, are protected against imitations as well as allowing companies supplying the products to use the scheme's quality seals in their marketing.
'The EU and China have rich traditions in the production of quality products, and the GI system is a good way of highlighting these regional traditions to consumers,' said EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos.
'China is a key future export market for EU food products. The completion of the 10+10 is an important step in the process towards a better protection in China of EU Geographical Indications for agricultural products and foodstuffs.'
He added: 'We are now looking to build on this success through negotiating a broader bilateral agreement on GIs, which we hope to conclude in the course of 2013.'
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