Gruyère cheese can be made in America, rules US court
In Europe, Gruyère, the name of a cheese and a small picturesque Swiss town (Gruyères), is currently legally reserved for specific cheeses from parts of Switzerland and France made to strict recipes. However, in the US it is applied loosely to a type of cheese that differs from the Swiss and French originals. European producers have tried to end the confusion by legally reserving the name for their product. But on 3 March 2023, a US court of appeal upheld a lower court ruling in favour of American cheesemakers’ looser use of the name.
Gruyere Cheese © David Taljat | Dreamstime.com
The recent US appeals court decision is part of a legal battle that began in 2013 when an association of European producers of Gruyère cheese legally opposed the application of the brand to a different US cheese on the grounds that it was confusing to apply the same name to different cheeses.
However, US appeals court judges upheld the lower court ruling concluding that the Swiss and French plaintiffs “cannot overcome what the record makes clear: cheese consumers in the United States understand ‘GRUYERE’ to refer to a type of cheese, which renders the term generic”.
Acknowledging the defeat, the Swiss association defending the brand said that it was disappointed that Swiss Gruyère finds itself competing with a totally different product with the same name. Switzerland’s federal department of agriculture echoed the disappointment at the outcome, which it described as a decision that could only damage the entire industry.
The Gruyère cheese naming saga has a long history. The name Gruière (later Gruyère) was first applied to cheese in 1655, according to a producers’ association. In Switzerland, Gruyère cheese falls under the protected label Gruyère AOP (appellation d’origine protégée). Producers of Gruyère AOP, which can now be found in the cantons of Vaud, Neuchâtel, Jura and Bern, must follow a precise recipe that starts with raw milk from…
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