‘Sriracha’ sauce: is it what it says on the bottle?

Image: Si Racha coast; sauces from left: Sriraja Panich, Huy Fong/Rooster, Flying Goose, Three Mountains, Exotic Food (USA style)

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Sriracha

— Jay Rayner (@jayrayner1) September 26, 2020

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED MAY 29, 2023 | UPDATED MAY 31, 2023

Parts on the history of Sriracha sauce have been revised considerably (May 31, 2023) following further research into Thai-language material

Fancy a Japanese seafood omelette with “mayo spun through with sriracha”? Smoked cod head “doused in a sriracha emulsion”? How about McDonald’s sriracha-and-kale burger, described as “an aging hipster’s cry for help”? Or just sausages and brown sauce mixed with sriracha in proportions of 5:1.

Sriracha is gaining popularity among chefs and people who just enjoy their food. But what exactly is it?

First, you may have noticed that “Trade β Blog” is about trade. So this piece is not about the joys of eating or cooking with the distinctive chilli sauce. It’s about a controversial issue in trade: the use of a geographical name to identify a product. But it does include some blind tasting in the search for authenticity.

Second, you might also have noticed that all those quotes at the beginning use “sriracha” spelt with a lowercase “s”, as if it were just an ordinary noun.

In a sense it is. But Sriracha (officially Si Racha) is also very much a name. For a start, it’s a town and small port originally built around a sawmill and fishing communities, about 100km southeast of Bangkok, on the way to the resort of Pattaya and next door to what is now Thailand’s Eastern Seaboard industrial complex.

It’s the town where the sauce originally came from and where it got its name.

Later a version of the sauce was produced and marketed in the US by a Vietnamese immigrant who had nothing to do with the Thai town but achieved what is hailed as “a classic American success story”.

That success is more about marketing, financial clout and filling a gap, and perhaps less about the quality of the product (more below). Think of US Parmesan — although US Sriracha is perhaps not so bad.

Why it’s a mistake to talk about a ‘Swiss-style’ post-Brexit UK-EU deal

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED NOVEMBER 21, 2022 | UPDATED DECEMBER 5, 2022

Maybe it was because someone thought it would be a good idea to stick a label on where UK-EU relations might be heading now that the atmosphere between the two is widely reported to have improved. Or perhaps it was just because people were bored while waiting for the football World Cup to start.

Whatever the reason, “Swiss-style ties with Brussels” suddenly became big news over the weekend after the Sunday Times reported (November 20, 2022, paywalled, but some more detail here) that the British government is considering exactly that.

Reactions ranged from “Doubt it. EU hates its relationship with Switzerland & Switzerland hates its relationship with EU” (Mujtaba Rahman, here), to “when someone says ‘Swiss-style’ relationship, rather than hearing ‘a slightly better relationship [than] now’ everyone is like ‘LET ME GET MY NOTES’” (Sam Lowe, here).

The problem here is that “Swiss-style” is being used as shorthand. It’s a label, but one that’s misleading and not really explained. Both of the reactions above are valid, at least to some extent, but they are talking about different things.

WTO agriculture negotiators face challenge of thinking outside the box(es)

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 23, 2022 | UPDATED OCTOBER 24, 2022

See also the report on the retreat (published October 26, 2022):
WTO agriculture retreat said strong on context but weak on give-and-take

Brain-storming. Blue sky thinking. Wiping the slate clean. Thinking outside the box. Pick your cliché. World Trade Organization (WTO) members’ ambassadors and agriculture attachés go on a “retreat” tomorrow (October 24) as they try to discover solutions where none have been found for over a decade.

The common impression is that the WTO agriculture negotiations have achieved nothing since they started almost a quarter of a century ago in 2000.

This is partly because after just over a year (in 2001), the talks were rolled into the newly launched and broader Doha Round of WTO negotiations. And now the Doha Round is widely considered to be dead.

Officially the position is more complicated. Some members say the Doha Round is over. Others say the original mandate continues — they refuse to endorse the end of the round.

In practice some parts of the Doha Round have been concluded, such as the Trade Facilitation and Fisheries Subsidies agreements. Other parts are in limbo or the talks have dried up, at least among the full membership. What has faded away is the idea of the talks as one unified package or “single undertaking”.

(An aside here. What almost no one has noticed is that the Trade Negotiations Committee of the WTO membership — with the director-general ex officio in the chair — still meets. This committee was set up specifically within the Doha Round. If the round has ended so should the Trade Negotiations Committee. That would also mean the director-general has no official position in any council or committee of the WTO membership.)

UPDATES: expanding the WTO intellectual property waiver for COVID-19

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 4, 2022 | UPDATED AS INDICATED

The waiver on patent protection for COVID-19 vaccines was agreed at the WTO Ministerial Conference on June 17, 2022. The text with brief explanations is here. The waiver is not an obligation. Countries can choose to suspend certain patent rights if they want.

Much of the work after the Ministerial Conference results from a provision for WTO members to decide within six months (by December 17, 2022) whether or not to expand the waiver to include COVID-19 tests and treatments:

“No later than six months from the date of this Decision, Members will decide on its extension to cover the production and supply of COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics”

Background: The original (revised) proposal; the debate; the proposed compromise and analysis.

Updates on the latest developments will be added here, with links to new documents and news items. That will include any notifications from countries changing their laws to apply the waiver. So far there are none.

Key events

• December 20, 2022 — The General Council agrees on postponing the deadline with no date set, but to be reconsidered in the Spring
• December 19, 2022 — The General Council postpones a decision on postponing the deadline
• December 17, 2022 — deadline for expansion decision missed, so far no country has moved to use the vaccine patent waiver agreed in June
• December 16, 2022 — formal meeting: chair’s draft binned, replaced by short paragraph postponing the deadline
• December 7, 2022 — chair’s draft factual report circulated
• December 6, 2022 — informal meeting discusses proponents’ draft and postponing deadline
• December 5–6, 2022 — US announces it will need time to consult stakeholders
• November 2, 2022 — informal meeting, with members’ positions on expanding the waiver to tests and treatments crystallised into three groups
• July 6, 2022 — first meeting after the vaccine patent waiver decision, followed by stock-taking and informal meetings

(TRIPS = trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, the official description of intellectual property issues that are discussed in the WTO — they should be “trade-related” issues)

If Americans are confused about Gruyère cheese, blame the French

It’s war: don’t talk about geographical indications

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 13, 2022 | UPDATED JANUARY 29, 2022

“If you’re new to trade and want to know how to start a brawl between trade people — Simon has the answer.”

That tweet, accompanied by a riotously animated GIF of a bar fight, came from Greg Messenger, associate professor at Bristol University Law School.

“Simon” is another trade law guru, Simon Lester, whose CV includes a stint in the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat.

Let’s keep up the erosion & make all cheese terms generic!

— Simon Lester

“GI Simon,” punned a third trade law guru Holger Hestermeyer of The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London.

Lester had tweeted the outcome of a court case as reported on NBC News: “decades of importation, production, and sale of cheese labeled GRUYERE produced outside the Gruyère region of Switzerland and France have eroded the meaning of that term and rendered it generic.”

That quote already contains a lot that is inflammatory in trade. Lester added a couple of gallons (US, of course, 3.785411784 litres each) of gasoline to the flames: “Let’s keep up the erosion & make all cheese terms generic!”

No agreement on India’s call for WTO ministers to discuss COVID-19 waiver

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 10, 2022 | UPDATED JANUARY 11, 2022

India’s call for an online WTO ministerial meeting to  discuss the proposed intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 fell well short of consensus at an informal General Council meeting today (January 10, 2022).

Many delegations countering that members would have to be much closer to agreement on the proposed waiver before a meeting of ministers would be able to contribute to a solution, said sources familiar with today’s discussion of just over two hours.

Postponed WTO conference saves delegates from grappling with declaration on pandemic

Updates
May 9, 2022 — In 2022, Honduras Ambassador Dacio Castillo took over as “facilitator”. He continued to modify the draft according to members’ comments. The aim was to agree on the text for the upcoming Ministerial Conference in parallel with a compromise deal on intellectual property. Castillo had succeeded Walker as General Council chair for 2021. See the final paragraph here.

New dates — On February 23, 2022, WTO members meeting as the General Council
agreed to reschedule the Ministerial Conference for the week of June 13. The dates were later fixed for June 12–15.

Late on Friday November 26, 2021, WTO members had agreed in an urgently-called meeting to postpone indefinitely the four-day Ministerial Conference due to start the following Tuesday.

The reason was new travel restrictions announced by Switzerland earlier in the day after a new COVID-19 variant of concern was discovered in southern Africa. The variant had also been detected in Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.

Switzerland banned flights from southern Africa and required COVID-19 tests and quarantine for travellers from the region and the three other countries. This would effectively prevent ministers and officials from those countries from attending the WTO Conference in Geneva.

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED NOVEMBER 26, 2021 | UPDATED MAY 20, 2022

Four days before trade ministers were due to gather for the first World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in four years, their delegates in Geneva were divided on what to recommend they should say in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The disagreement on Friday (November 26, 2021) centred on parts of a draft ministerial declaration and post-conference action plan designed to reflect members’ shared approach to the pandemic and how they would address their differences through the action plan.

The delegates had then intended to continue to try to break the deadlock over the weekend. But their efforts have been interrupted because the Ministerial Conference is now postponed as a result of new Swiss travel and quarantine restrictions.

What have the UK and Switzerland agreed on trade post-Brexit?

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 5, 2019 | UPDATED JANUARY 27, 2021

A summary of this is on the EU Relations Law blog, here

What have the UK and Switzerland agreed on their trade relationship post-Brexit? Essentially, they have been partly “rolling over” to the UK the present Swiss-EU trade relationship.

EU agreements are being “rolled over” into UK agreements in order to allow as much continuity as possible for trade and for business. They are called “continuity agreements”.

Below are an introduction to the provisions on goods and services, followed by Swiss government summaries of key parts of its agreements with the UK, mainly on goods but also narrowly on services.

But first, some context and explanations.

What are geographical indications? What do they mean for post-Brexit UK?

Which of these are geographical indications? Answer at the end (click the image to see it full size)

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED MAY 5, 2018 | FIRST PUBLISHED ON UK TRADE FORUM APRIL 3, 2018 | UPDATED JANUARY 13, 2022

Among the thousands of policy questions facing Britain after it leaves the EU is what its approach should be for geographical indications.

These are names — like Melton Mowbray pork pies, Rutland bitter and Bordeaux wine — that are used to identify certain products.

The UK’s policy will affect both its own and other countries’ names, and it has now taken first steps in revealing what its approach will be.

People’s views of geographical indications range from cherishing them as precious cultural heritage and commercial property, to annoyance and scorn.

What are they? And what are the decisions facing the UK? This is an attempt to explain them simply. It’s in two main parts with a small third part tacked on.

How does a nation of serial voters handle a referendum?

By Peter Ungphakorn
MARCH 2, 2018 | UPDATED MARCH 4, 2018

UPDATE:
• Voters in Vaud rejected the cantonal popular initiative on dental health insurance by 57.5% to 42.5% with a turnout of 55.6%
• The nationwide proposal to scrap the TV licence was rejected by all cantons, and by 71.6% to 28.4% of the popular vote, turnout 54.1%. Majorities in favour were needed on both counts
• The nationwide vote on extending the government’s authority to collect taxes was accepted by all cantons, and by 84.1% to 15.9% of the popular vote, turnout 52.9%. Again majorities were needed on both counts
• Incidentally, voters in Valais voted to rewrite their cantonal constitution.

On Sunday (March 4), the Swiss go to the first of four polls scheduled this year. It’s an opportunity to take a quick look at how referendums are handled in Switzerland.