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ARLINGTON, VA – Consortium for Common Food Names (CCFN) Senior Director Shawna Morris testified today before the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) Special 301 Subcommittee on the historic progress made in protecting common food and beverage names—like “parmesan,” “feta,” and “bologna”—and the critical need to build on this momentum in ongoing and upcoming trade negotiations.

CCFN submitted comprehensive comments to the agency in January, documenting the groundbreaking achievements of the past year while highlighting key markets where continued engagement is essential to preserve U.S. export opportunities. In her testimony, Morris emphasized that 2025 represented a watershed moment in the protection of common names for U.S. producers, driven primarily by the Trump Administration’s proactive and results-oriented trade agenda.

“After years of uphill battles, the past year marked a real breakthrough,” Morris stated. “Thanks to this Administration’s proactive trade agenda, multiple key markets around the world have now committed to adopt meaningful protections for common names. These are not symbolic gestures. They are concrete, enforceable commitments that preserve market access and give American exporters certainty. They ensure that common names cannot simply be rebranded as exclusive European property and quietly removed from store shelves.”

Reciprocal trade agreements signed with seven countries to date, including markets like Taiwan, Malaysia and Guatemala, represent the best examples of this progress, establishing unprecedented provisions that guard against the monopolization of widely used food and beverage names. All seven agreements include comprehensive lists of generic terms that trading partners have committed to protect and ground-breaking due process protections governing how partners must handle GI applications.

While celebrating these achievements, Morris also underlined the importance of maintaining momentum as the European Union continues to use trade agreements to confiscate common names around the world.

“We must build on the foundation laid in 2025—replicating these gold-standard protections, insisting on transparency and fairness, and using every available tool to defend common names.”

The public hearing is part of USTR’s annual Special 301 review, which identifies countries that are inadequately defending intellectual property rights and informs the Administration’s engagement on intellectual property issues for the coming year.