A GI to Usurp Pastoral Heritage: The Case of the Cotija Cheese (Mexico)

Résumé 0

Are Geographical Indications (GI) simple subtleties intended to insure the commercial openning of the territories? Or can they also guarantee the protection of local products and ressources in a project of endogenous territorial development? The examination of the qualification process of the Queso Cotija – a Mexican pastoral cheese – shows that the answer to this question raises with national public policies, power relationship within the food supply chain and with the enforcement of local collective action. More fundamentally the nature of the protection insured by the GI proceeds from appropriation conflicts linked with the criteria retained to define the product, the technical prescriptions and on the place reserved for the local resources. Considered from this point of view, the experience of the mexican breeders can be recognized as a process of despoliation: dispossession of a fame patiently reconquerred, of know-how built in the course of several generations and, finally, of a characteristic product of their collective and professional identity.