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Butchers blast Slovak sausage bid

Slovakia seeks EU protected status for špekáčky as others lay claim to similar recipes

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Jan Horák makes sausages at the Dolejší butchery in Davle, south of Prague.
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Slovakia is seeking help to protect what it says is its sausage. The threatened links, called špekáčky, have been a staple of Central European dinner plates for ages but became the subject of a dispute after Slovakia applied this May for a special European Union protected status for the food.
Slovakia’s claim has roiled Czech butchers and meat-product makers, who say špekáčky is also a Czech (and Polish) food and that the Slovaks are being sneaky in their attempts to claim sausage rights.
“At first, our Slovak colleagues kept everything secret and were relying on us not noticing their application,” says Jan Katina of the Czech Meat Manufacturers Association. “However, we found out.” And so, what has been until now a cultural link between the two societies has devolved into a sausage war.
“Slovak producers are neither morally nor legally entitled to have their deli meat products registered as so-called Traditional Specialty Guaranteed,” Katina says.
Aside from questions of moral entitlement to the sausage, Czech officials say it’s unlikely the EU would agree with Slovakia’s legal claim.
“There is no logic in it,” says Jan Veleba, president of the Agrarian Chamber. “The protected status is used for specialties of a given region and … špekáčky are produced in the Czech Republic and Poland as well.”
Also, Katina says, a food eligible for protected status must have been produced according to a unified and unchanged recipe for at least 25 years and can’t be used as a generalized name of a type of sausage. Špekáčky — more or less an amalgam of meat, water, salt and spice — are made according to each individual butcher’s secrets.
“We are not able to specify the number of the recipes or how different they are because the recipes are usually considered the trade secret of particular producers,” Katina says.
High-level diplomacy
The first attempts to regulate the sausages were in the 1960s and 70s, when Czechoslovak technical standards were established to unify production processes and recipes in the country’s meat industry.
“After the fall of communism, these standards were naturally removed and the newly privatized manufacturing plants started using these now-generalized names for their own [recipes],” Katina says.
The purpose of the EU stamp is to protect products from imitation and to help producers market their goods, says Michael Mann, a spokesman for agriculture and rural development for the European Commission. “It is a guarantee of quality,” he says.
However, Katina suspects Slovakia is abusing this principle for an advantage in the market.
“The main motive was economic profit,” he says. “After both countries entered the EU, some Czech producers became more visible on the Slovak market. The local producers were in a natural way pushed out of the market and this was how the idea of our [Slovak] colleagues was conceived to make it more difficult for Czech deli meats to go east.”
Magdaléna Fajtová, spokeswoman for Slovakia’s Agriculture Ministry, says the move stems from the country’s effort to promote the quality of traditional Slovak foods. “[Consumers] are used to a certain taste and quality,” she says. “All the makers will have to follow the approved way of making these sausages.”
To date, Slovakia has no EU-protected foods, according to a European Commission Web site. The Czech Republic has six, including three beers, Budějovické pivo, Budějovický měsťanský var, Českobudějovickě pivo; one pastry, štramberskě uši; one fish, Pohořelický kapr; and one vegetable, žatecký chmel.
Petr Habán, spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry, says the Czech Republic has the highest number of registered stamps from the new EU countries and that more Czech products — Pardubický gingerbread and Mariánské lázně sugar wafers — are bidding for protection now.
As for meats, Italy and Portugal hold the most EU-protected stamps. Germany also has several sausage-related protections.
The EU must make finish examining the špekačky petition by next May.
But, ulitmately, the fate of špekáčky is likely to be settled in diplomatic talks, says Haban.
“Our ministry prefers to negotiate with both [Poland and Slovakia] and we believe that we will reach some multilateral agreement,” Habán says.
However, if Slovakia does succeed in getting protection for its špekáčky, it could cost Czech butchers, who would have to figure out a new way to market their meats without calling them špekáčky.
František Dolejší, a Prague butcher whose family has been making the meat for more than 100 years, has no plans to discontinue production, regardless of what the EU says.
“We would definitely not stop making them because it is a traditional Czech product and … roasting špekáčky on open fire belongs to the traditional activities here.”
— Nad’a Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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