Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

MONSANTO

Bayer-Monsanto deal ‘danger for our food’: French chefs

Some of France's top chefs on Tuesday denounced the $66-billion takeover of controversial seed firm Monsanto by chemicals giant Bayer as a "danger for our dinner plates".

Published: 21 September 2016 08:30 CEST

Bayer-Monsanto deal 'danger for our food': French chefs

A demonstration against Monsanto. File photo: DPA

“Nature, diversity and the quality of our food should not be crushed by the freedom-destroying steamroller of Bayer-Monsanto,” they declared in an open letter signed by more than 100 chefs, winemakers and patissiers.

“This new giant of seeds and pesticides has only one ambition – to control the complete food chain… citizens cannot stand by and watch their plates be filled with chemicals,” it added.

The chefs, who included the Argentina-born Mauro Colagreco, who runs the Mirazur restaurant on the French Riviera which was named the sixth best restaurant in the world earlier this year, said the EU was right to be worried by the merger.

The bloc is investigating the likely impact of the massive deal — the biggest ever undertaken by a German company — which would need the approval of regulators.

Monsanto's genetically modified crops, its herbicide Roundup and other pesticides “threaten cultural as well as agricultural diversity”, the chefs said in their letter published on the Atabula website.

“Without quality and healthy products and a diversity of crops, cooks can no longer exercise their creative talents,” added the letter, which was also signed by three-star Michelin chefs Yannick Alleno and Michel and Sebastien Bras.

Friends of the Earth have already labelled the tie-up a “marriage made in hell”.

“This mega corporation will be doing its best to force damaging pesticides and GM seeds into our countryside,” campaigner Adrian Bebb said in a statement.

The National Farmers Union in the US said the Bayer deal, along with other pending agricultural mergers, “are being made to benefit the corporate boardrooms at the expense of family farmers, ranchers, consumers and rural economies.”

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Why France's Champagne lawyers are feared across the world

In late April, Belgian customs authorities, with the help of the French Comité interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne, ordered that 2,352 cans of Miller high life beer be destroyed when they entered the port of Antwerp. The reason? Miller high life beer cans all carry an inscription of their nickname “The champagne of beers”, and to the Comité Champagne, this qualifies as an infringement on their trademark.

Even though few would mistake Miller high life beer for the carefully crafted AOC (appellation origine controllée) wine, the Champagne industry’s legal team takes any misuse of the name seriously and they have a history of doing so.

Listen to the team at The Local discuss the ‘Champagne wars’ in this week’s episode of the Talking France podcast. Download it here or listen on the link below

“It’s the price of glory,” Roxane de Varine-Bohan, one of five lawyers at the CIVC looking after brand protection told AFP in 2021.

READ MORE: Champagne: Four founding myths of a global icon

The CIVC has been in existence since 1941, but even before its creation, the Champagne industry still took maintaining their product’s good name very seriously.

In 1891, protection for the Champagne name and wine was first codified in the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (the Treaty of Madrid) which made it so trademarks would be recognised by other nations who signed and ratified the treaty.

In 1919, recognising the Champagne trademark was even written into the Treaty of Versailles – which also dealt with some weightier topics such as thrashing out the conditions to end World War I including war reparations.

When France came up with its designation to protect special products with a label to denote its unique geographic and production heritage, the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC), in 1935, Champagne was quickly recognised, just one year later. This meant that an AOC Champagne must meet certain standards, from the geographic location, type of grape used, cultivation techniques employed and more, to gain the label.

So when the CIVC came about, it carried on this legacy of ensuring that the Champagne name was only used to products that fit those requirements, particularly via lawsuits.

Their work doesn’t just concern beverages, anyone using the name Champagne to market their product – maybe to signify that it’s a high-class item or even just something of similar colour – can become a target.

In 1993, the CIVC took Yves Saint Laurent to court over its perfume “Champagne de Yves Saint Laurent”, ultimately winning the lawsuit and forcing the company to halt its sales and pay compensation, and in 2014, the industry’s lawyers sued an Australian wine critic and educator, ‘Champagne Jane’, asking that she take down her social media accounts bearing the title.

Most recently, 35,000 bottles of a Haitian soda, ‘Courrone Fruit Champagne’, were destroyed by EU customs agents in Le Havre, France for violating the copyright.

And as of 2023, thanks to the efforts of the Comité Champagne, the appellation is recognised and protected in over 121 countries.

However, the United States is one of the few places where industry lawyers have a slightly shorter reach. The United States never signed the Treaty of Versailles, and instead, it recognises the word ‘champagne’ (small C), as a generic term not fit for trademark.

For many decades, California wine producers had made their own sparkling wines with the title of ‘champagne’, and after these years of disagreement, in 2006, the EU and the US finally reached an agreement with the WTO regarding how that title should be treated moving forward. Essentially, the agreement stated that wines produced before 2006 could keep the title, but it could not be awarded to any post-2006.

According to Forbes, “nearly 80 million bottles of American sparkling wine are produced and labelled with the word champagne every year”.

A representative from the CIVC, Philippe Wibrotte, told the American news site in 2018 that they had been “forced to sign this agreement”.

READ MORE: ‘The price of glory’ – Meet the Champagne industry lawyers charged with protecting the brand name

“It’s better than it was because previously, there was no protection, but it’s still a problem”, Wibrotte told Forbes.

Still American-headquartered companies, like Apple who in 2013 according to Forbes considered naming their gold iPhone “champagne-coloured”, have abandoned such projects when threatened with legal action from the CIVC.

Using ‘champagne’ in the name also largely limits US products to a domestic market, as other countries will recognise the Champagne protection – as happened with that shipment of Miller beer. The company does not export ‘the champagne of beers’ to the EU, the cans destroyed in Belgium were a private shipment that was destined for a customer in Germany.

The reason the Champagne industry cares so much about its name is simple and laid out on the Appelation’s website: “The ongoing fight against all manner of imitation attempts not only protects the Champagne designation but also consumers by guaranteeing them transparency in terms of the wines they buy and drink”.

So what is Champagne?

To be legally classed as Champagne, the sparkling wine must have been produced in the Champagne wine region of France, while following the strict rules of the appellation, which include specific planting techniques for vines, grape varieties, pressing methods, and manners of fermentation.

As Champagne is a blended wine, several grape varieties can technically be used, but the most common are the white Chardonnay, and the dark-skinned grapes: Pinot Noir and Meunier. You can have either a white or a rosé Champagne, though most are white. Four other grape varieties are permitted with the AOC, but they are increasingly rare.

For rosé Champagne – which is allowed – the same grape varieties are used, but the different colour can be obtained through two methods: macerated or blended.

“Macerated rosé Champagnes are made by leaving the musts with the skin of the grapes to macerate and colour the juice, and so-called “blended” rosé Champagnes are made by adding a still red Champagne wine to base white wines (so before the second fermentation stage)”, as the Appellation explains on its website.

Url copied to clipboard!