08 October 2008
BEIRUT: With delicately flavored dishes that blend a healthy Mediterranean diet with the exotic flavors of the Middle East, Lebanon's cuisine has long been famed as one of the finest in the world. But the familiar flavors of hummus, tabbouleh and falafel could soon be leaving bitter taste in the mouth of Israel's food industry as Lebanese producers gear up for an international court case that would prevent Israel preparing and selling Lebanese dishes around the world.
The Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI) has said that it is preparing the ground for the landmark case, which would officially register a variety of popular dishes as Lebanese in origin, preventing Israel from marketing its own versions of the foods under the same names.
Fadi Abboud, the president of ALI told the Al-Arabiya Web site that Israel's marketing of Lebanese foods cost the economy "tens of millions of dollars annually."
"We are working on registering all the foods and ingredients which will be submitted to the Lebanese government so it can appeal to the international courts against Israel. We are preventing Israel from stealing our main food trademarks and selling them around the world," Abboud said.
If the case is successful, Israel will be forced, under laws designed to protect local specialties, to find other names for the foods if it wants to continue to sell them. Other food and drinks that qualify for "protected designation of origin" (PDO) status include champagne, which can only be made in a specific region of France and Parma ham, which must be produced in its Italian namesake city.
Lebanon's greatest hope of victory lies in a precedent case involving Greek Feta cheese. In 2002, a European court ruled that the creamy white cheese was uniquely linked to Greece, and other countries producing it were banned from using the word feta to describe their product.
Acknowledging that Greece had a special right to produce the cheese, which has been made from sheep or goat's milk in the country for 6,000 years, the court granted special PDO status. Feta producers in Germany and Denmark were hit particularly hard by the decision, which forced them to find another, less recognizable, name for their cheese.
Lebanese food producers are far from guaranteed to succeed in the case however, as the court's decision will hinge upon whether the dishes can be proven to be uniquely Lebanese in origin. If it decides that the foods cannot be traced back to Lebanon, or that they have become sufficiently generic in recent years to negate a historical link, the court could rule in favor of Israel.
Establishing the historical pedigree of the dishes in question will be no mean feat for Lebanon's lawyers. Hummus is eaten across the Middle East and its historical origins are unclear. One legend says that the dish was first prepared in the 12th century by Saladin, while the earliest known written description of it comes from 17th century Damascus. Falafel also has unclear historical origins, but is widely thought to have been invented in Egypt. After Israel was established, Israelis claimed the dish as their own, and many Hebrew cookbooks make no reference to the Arab origins of the dish.
Perhaps Lebanon's best chance of receiving PDO protection for its food lies with tabbouleh, which is widely accepted to be of Lebanese origin. The test for awarding the protected status to tabbouleh would therefore lie in whether the dish had become too "generic" to be classed a Lebanese specialty.
Copyright The Daily Star 2008.
