A CODEX committee is meeting this week to hammer out international standards for the dairy industry, including contentious issues such as who can label their cheese as "parmesan".
The French-based Food Production Daily reports the meeting will form part of an ongoing program to create international food safety standards under the Codex Alimentarius, a body set up by the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation.
This seeks to establish standards, based on proven science, to underpin regulations governing the way food processors operate worldwide, and to incorporate those standards into laws.
The meeting this week will consider amendments to Codex's general standard for cheese and will also debate draft standards for skimmed milk in which the milk fat has been replaced with vegetable fat.
Other topics include draft standards for whey cheeses and other styles such as danbo, cheddar and parmesan.
At a key meeting last year the central decision making Codex body was unable to make a decision on the outstanding issue of intellectual property concerns over the labelling and composition of parmesan cheese.
The EU says Codex is the wrong forum to debate the right of "geographical indications" and "intellectual property" over such products and is instead pursuing this issue at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and at the World Intellectual Property Rights Organisation in defense of Italian producers.
Parmesan is a French inspired translation of Parmigiano-Reggiano which is a protected designation of origin in the territory of the EU and may only be used by Italian producers who oppose the use of that name for cheese manufactured and sold in North and South America .
The EU argues use of this name outside Italy infringes the 'geographical indication' intellectual property mark.
