TOPIC:

Here's a quandry.

As Irish cheese being sent to the UK to be packaged eventually led to it being produced in the UK to spec but still labelled the same, how would people feel if the same thing happened with beer?

For example, take this hypothetical scenario: if O'Hara's are sending tankers of beer to the UK to be bottled (because only a relatively small amount of bottles comes back here as the domestic market is so small), would there be anything wrong with them taking the step the cheese people took: get the beer brewed to spec under contract, using the exact same ingredients in the UK, and label it as O'Hara's?

"Tube":drcs5qyd wrote: would there be anything wrong with them taking the step the cheese people took: get the beer brewed to spec under contract, using the exact same ingredients in the UK, and label it as O'Hara's?[/quote:drcs5qyd]"Wrong" is a subjective term, but it wouldn't be Irish craft beer under Beoir's definition.

Kinda stating the obvious here but any business,either making beer or widgets has to be run as a profitable concern.
Our main task as Beoir is to help promote the concept of choice and to have real choice, we need to support as many brewery start ups around the country.
The recent launch of SPA from diageo is not party to that concept as it comes from the duopoly that targets to stifle choice and I believe will disappear again if they succeed.

Surely the cheese/beer being sent abroad for production is counter to the same laws that protect things such as Camembert cheese and Parma Ham and Pork pies, in that they must come from the areas they have on their labels, so a Kilmeaden can't be called Kilmeadan unless it's produced there? It should run under the name Kilmeaden style cheese.
Am I seeing this wrong?

Is there a need to have a legal definition of what an Irish craft beer is, to retain the "trademark" and the Irish Appelation? I realise there was a similar discussion recently but not quite the same.

Eoin you hit the nail right on the head,produce produced here and marketed to the customer should be what it says.

"EoinMag":u67lren6 wrote: Am I seeing this wrong?[/quote:u67lren6]Yes, the other examples are specifically protected. Kilmeaden isn't. Neither, obviously, is "cheddar". It doesn't even get a capital C these days.

"EoinMag":u67lren6 wrote: Is there a need to have a legal definition of what an Irish craft beer is[/quote:u67lren6]It would be handy all right. But you'll have trouble convincing anyone it's a "need".

"EoinMag":u67lren6 wrote: to retain the "trademark"[/quote:u67lren6]It can't be trademarked.

"EoinMag":u67lren6 wrote: and the Irish Appelation?[/quote:u67lren6]Protected status is a massively slow process and since the definition isn't as clear as just saying "Irish beer = beer from Ireland" there's no guarantee of success.