Effect of PDO on Rural Heritage : Integrating Origin Labelling to Promote Sustainable Rural Development in Europe

The food quality schemes are intended to support the farming system. The information conveyed by the labels has evolved over time. The origin designation checks the production chain: feed, raw material and processing. None of these schemes contained explicit measures relating ‘quality’ to the positive environmental externalities of the production on the site of origin. Focusing quality labelling strategy just on the food, can fail to describe the local specificity. It can cause underlying contradictions of the policy itself, especially to the fragile territories and small producers. In order to understand in which measure the designation could affect the quality of the territory, this paper focuses on a case study of an Italian PDO cheese of the mountain. Here the historic producers did not accept to apply the standard guiding principles established by the PDO. The research was conducted through land surveys, interviews and rural heritage surveys. After illustrating the quality certification system, the work continues by describing the tradition of producing Bitto cheese. Having established the context, it then identifies and analyses key factors which influence the links of food to the identity of the site. The investigations carried out underline that the relationship of a typical product with its territory is a reciprocal safeguard factor: the protected production becomes the warranty tool for the protection of the sense of place. When an agri-food is linked to its community, it becomes a driving force of sustainable territorial development. The conclusions emphasize that integrating rural heritage in food labelling designation can open up new prospects and opportunities and thus pass on the ability to make (and shape) quality to future generations.The enlargement of the European Union is a challenge for the contemporary legal framework. This attention should be enforced in the Community's fragile rural regions where production costs are high.