By Chris Jewitt, CEO of Food and Drink North East
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending and supporting GI Smart – a pan-European project exploring the role of Geographical Indications in our food systems, and what protecting products of provenance really means for health, sustainability and regional food culture.
It’s work close to my heart.
Having previously worked with Newcastle University on similar projects – including time spent with balsamic and Parmesan producers in Emilia-Romagna – I’ve seen first-hand what Geographical Indications can do for a region: how they protect centuries of tradition, defend producers against imitation, and keep the value of food where it belongs, with the communities that create it.
Which raises an uncomfortable question for us here.
The North East has only ever had one GI product – Newcastle Brown Ale.
And we lost it. The protection was revoked in 2007 after production moved out of the city – first across the river, then out of the region altogether.
So today, our region holds none.
Time to change that? Maybe.
But only if it adds real value to the work already underway – and that’s the honest question worth sitting with.
Because we’re already on a journey.
Through our sector-based work at Food and Drink North East, through the storytelling work at We Are Local Heroes, and through the recent European Region of Gastronomy bid, we’re building the case for the North East as a place where food, provenance and identity matter.
Geographical Indications might be one more tool in that story – a way to protect what makes our food ours.
Or they might not be the right fit for every product.
What matters is asking the question properly, and GI Smart is exactly the kind of conversation that helps us do that.
And it was great to see North East businesses in the room – Doddington Dairy, Hepple and Big River Bakery among them.
Producers like these are precisely why this matters: provenance, quality and place, made real.
One GI, revoked in 2007.
Whether we write the next chapter depends on whether it strengthens the journey we’re already on.
Perhaps the most striking part of the day was hearing directly from consumers – people who told us they care deeply about local food, but who challenged us, and those with real power to act, on whether we’re doing enough to prioritise and promote it.
A challenge worth listening to.
A big thank you to Barbara Tocco at the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise my long-term collaborator on short supply chain work, for organising an excellent session and for involving me.
