Upset over imposters, Athens finally seeks Greek yogurt protection

With the failure of Greek yogurt companies to market their world-best singular commodity outside the country, the government now is trying to protect the designation of the product as uniquely Greek, although unable to do so in the United States.

Irked by imposters, such as Chobani, a “Greek-style yogurt” made by a Turkish-American company that blew past Greece’s FAGE in capturing the American market after the Greek business sat on its hands, Greece’s Agriculture Ministry wants the European Union to offer brand name protection for real Greek yogurt, although it’s already too late outside the bloc.

The Ministry of Agriculture has assembled a group that plans to apply to register “Greek yogurt” in the European Union Register as a term with a protected geographical indication (PGI) or protected designation of origin (PDO), according to DairyReporter.com.

That would officially prohibit companies in Europe from calling yogurt Greek. The initial process for making Greek yogurt and regular yogurt is the same, but Greek yogurt is strained to remove liquid, making it thicker and creamier, and giving it more protein and fewer carbohydrates per serving, and wildly popular in the US in the last decade where Greek companies failed to make inroads against imposters.

Some alleged “Greek” yogurts, instead of straining, add thickeners and protein, bastardizing the process and end product, such as in the Czech Republic.

“Using the term ‘Greek yoghurt’ for products produced outside Greece would deceive consumers and would create unfair competition in the E.U. market,” one unnamed EU official told the news site Euractiv.

But those rules won’t apply in the United States, where makers are free to label their yogurt as Greek, leading to dozens of fake Greek yogurt brands, such as Chobani, Yoplait, Dannon and others whose products are not made in Greece.

Chobani saw its sales go from just over $3 million to more than $1.1 billion in its first five years and the yogurt sector worldwide is worth some $8 billion, the Washington Post said in a report on the issue.

Sales have been slowing though with consumers turning to yogurt-based drinks as a convenience, meaning it could be too late as well for Greek companies to boost exports if they wanted.

Other countries are also pushing their own yogurt styles, including Iceland – although it’s cheese-based, and France, which puts its Oui brand – made by Yoplait – in a glass pot.

Journalist Charles Duhigg wrote in the New York Times: Yoplait “has finally figured out how to look beyond the data and embrace the narrative. Yoplait may have figured out how to fake authenticity as craftily as everyone else.”