> The only problem with that is that there might be producers outside these regions who produce better quality products, these producers will be penalized for not being able to use the actual product name and may give up on it
Not being allowed to lie isn't a penalty. E.g. if you are raising pigs in Texas you shouldn't be allowed to label your product as being "Ham from Italy." Whether or not it tastes better is completely irrelevant.
> E.g. if you are raising pigs in Texas you shouldn't be allowed to label your product as being "Ham from Italy."
What happens when the name of the product _is_ the name of the region though. For example, Champagne or Parmesan? Giving your product another name clearly disadvantages you.
Let's consider a US buyer of Parmesan: I have a choice between regular "Parmesan cheese", which is held to no particular standards in the US, and "Parmigiano-Reggiano", which is both expensive and (IMO) predictably delicious. Parmigiano-Reggiano is good because there are regional standards. As a customer, I know what I'm buying. This is the whole idea of a brand: It provides useful information to customers.
In the case of champagne, I'm usually unwilling to pay for the regional "brand." Instead, I often buy "cava," which is another regional AOC for sparkling wine, this one run by producers in Catalonia (and elsewhere in Spain). It's a bit cheaper, which is probably less than ideal for the producers, but I still know more or less what I'm getting.
You could argue that one or the other of these two situations is less than optimal. But as a customer, I find that AOCs and DOCs generally help me buy products I'll like. And since it would be hard for the producers of "Tennessee Whiskey" to enforce their agreed-upon quality standards on a company in New Zealand, it does make a certain amount of sense to limit participation geographically.
> I have a choice between regular "Parmesan cheese", which is held to no particular standards in the US, and "Parmigiano-Reggiano"
What if nobody bothers making quality "Parmigiano-Reggiano" in the US because they know it is close to impossible to compete against the brand name and the margin are not worth it to even try? Maybe, if Americans were allowed to call theirs "Parmigiano-Reggiano" they'd put a lot more effort into making it high quality given that they'd have a much bigger chance of making a profit.
It already happens, and new names change, or a different region creates their own regional name.
Champagne is already limited to a region in Europe, but that hasn't stopped, say, Catalonia from making Cava: their own regional brand for what is, in essence, the same thing. If anything, this also allowed local producers to band against the old name, which now indicates it's a product made in France.
So in practice, its not a big deal for good competitors.
You just need to get creative with your marketing. "ImProsciutto--it's not Prosciutto, it's improved", "I Can't Believe It's Not Champagne (tm)", "Parmigiano-Texicano", etc. :)
You either call it Parmesan-style cheese, or else you invent a new name for it, e.g. Meritage wine. Or else work out a deal with the AOC to get certified with some sort of appelation for products made in the style of the region.
For the same reason you can't start making adhesive bandages and selling them as Band-Aids, even though many people call them that: Both are proper names for a specific regional brand of sparkling wine and grana, or hard cheese, respectively.
The EU does recognize genericization of regional names in some cases, so I'm not sure it's in principle different from the U.S. on this, it just draws the line much further to one side, with a stronger presumption in favor of regional name protection. Two examples of regionally named cheeses now legally generic in the EU are "cheddar" and "emmental". These are the names of cheeses traditionally produced in the vicinity of Cheddar (in Somerset, England) and Emmental (in Bern, Switzerland), respectively, but have since become names for cheese style rather than cheese origin. There's an argument that "parmesan" should be similar, especially when used with a lowercase "p" in a manner analogous to the way "cheddar" is used, but the decision came out the other way on that one.
One that's currently being litigated in the EU is whether labeling products not from Greece as "Greek yogurt" is misleading. I personally think yes, especially given the capital 'G' and the parallels with other clear origin-designating terms like "Greek wine" and "Greek olive oil" (and mixed origin/style terms like "Scotch whisky"), but it could end up going either way.
That’s what’s done here. You see that it is not the exact original product (sometimes you don’t even want the original product, but a specific fake of it), and you see still what it’s similar to.
Not being allowed to lie isn't a penalty. E.g. if you are raising pigs in Texas you shouldn't be allowed to label your product as being "Ham from Italy." Whether or not it tastes better is completely irrelevant.