They say that rectifying is for the wise and it seems that the meat employer becomes wiser by rectifying its position of supporting the creation of the PGI serrano ham. After a little over a year, it has decided not to support the creation of a single Serrano Ham IGP for all of Spain.
We already counted on Gastronomic Information in January 2021 the petition that was processing the Department of agriculture to create a Serrano ham PGI. At that time, it had the support of the Business Federation of Meat and Meat Industries (FECIC). Now it seems that this has withdrawn support for the Ministry and will also present an appeal against the regulations. All this after realizing that it is inconsistent to create a single IGP for the entire territory of the state.
IGP Spanish serrano ham, nonsense
It seems that common sense has prevailed and organizations are realizing that it is not possible to unify all the Spanish territory in a single IGP. Although it is recognized that the name of Serrano ham must be protected, this nomenclature must be the result of criteria of territory, climatology, breed, elaboration, etc... To unite these criteria in a PGI in such a large country does not seem to make any sense.
At the time of the presentation the existing PGIs: Seron, Almeria, Trevelez (Granada) y Teruel They flatly refused the Ministry's claims. With good judgment they defended that the new IGP would destroy the quality work of many years. In this way, any producer of cured ham in Spain could use the Serrano ham IGP, being able to use elaborations "industrial" and just for the fact of being in Spain.
Confuse IGP with brand
Perhaps with good intention but with bad execution the Ministry wanted to avoid using the word “Serano Ham” of producers from outside and that the Spanish producers took advantage of the good reputation. It is true that foreign producers use the good name of Spanish ham to confuse the consumer and market hams produced in Latin America or Europe, labeling them as Serrano ham instead of cured ham.
It seems that they want to use the formula of the indication simply to defend a product that the Ministry must protect and, in any case, the brand Spain. Opening this door and using the formula of a PGI to protect the products of a country is unfeasible and is not the purpose of a PGI. All this is a clear sign of the failure of the continuous campaigns of the Spain brand of the different governments. These campaigns continue without valuing the Spanish product as it deserves, despite spending huge amounts of money on Spain and the European Union.
