Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma and Another v Asda Stores Ltd and Hygrade Foods Ltd (Case C-108/01)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 30 January 1998 |
| Date | 30 January 1998 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Chancery Division
Before Mr Lawrence Collins, QC
Sale of goods - Parma ham - designation of origin - no breach of European law
The sale of Parma ham that had been sliced and packaged outside the Parma region was contrary to Italian law, but it was not a breach of the EEC Council Regulation which protected the designation of origin of Parma ham. Accordingly, genuine Parma ham which had been sliced and packaged in England could lawfully be sold as Parma ham in England.
Mr Lawrence Collins, QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, so held in a reserved judgment in the Chancery Division on a motion brought by Asda Stores Ltd and Hygrade Foods Ltd to strike out the action brought against them by Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma.
Mr Nicholas Green for Asda and Hygrade Foods; Mr Jonathan Cole for the consortium.
HIS LORDSHIP said that Asda supermarkets sold packets of pre-sliced Parma ham which was sliced and packaged in England by Hygrade Foods Ltd.
Under Italian law (Law No 26 of February 13, 1990 as amended by ministerial decree No 253 of February 15, 1993) pre-packaged sliced Parma ham could only be described as Parma ham if it was sliced and packaged in Parma under the supervision of the consortium. But a foreign state could not, directly or indirectly, enforce its penal or other public laws in England. The consortium could therefore only succeed if the rights which it claimed were conferred by European law and were effective in the UK.
It relied on Council Regulation 2081/92 (OJ 1992 L208/1), which established a system for the registration and supervision of community protected designations of origin and geographical indications of agricultural products, and/or Commission Regulation 1107/96 (OJ 1996 L 148/1), which made provision for a fast track procedure for such registration.
It was accepted that the ham was genuine Parma ham and that its quality was not inferior to Parma ham sliced and packaged in Parma. Asda and Hygrade asked the court to declare that the EC regulations did not give the consortium the right to prevent the sale of Parma ham which had been sliced and packaged in England.
There was no doubt that the Council and Commission regulations contained no express reference to such processes as slicing and packaging. The application for registration of a protected designation of origin by the consortium did include references to the slicing...
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Consorzio Del Prosciutto Di Parma v Asda Food Stores Ltd and Another
...set out the facts. In view of the clear and accurate findings of the judge, I have no hesitation in taking them from his judgment. ( [1998] EuLR 192, [1998] FSR 697) "Parma ham and the Consortium For more than 2,000 years, ham, (the preserved hind leg of a pig) has been produced in the Po V......