For as long as I can remember, my favourite meal, if it qualifies to be called that, has been a toasted cheese-and-tomato sandwich. I fondly recall many an afternoon at what was then Café 101, opposite Addington Hospital, on the South Beach, KwaZulu-Natal, just before the beach starts to curve north. But alas, it is no more. All that remain are the memory and the personal loss of what was possibly the best toasted sandwich in South Africa.

Although I might wax lyrical about cheese, poets are not much enthused, as GK Chesterton aptly states in his collection of essays, Alarms and Discursions: “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

Recently, I found myself tasting Cheddar cheese in Cheddar, a parish in Somerset, in the UK, which is acknowledged as the origin of Cheddar cheese. In fact, Cheddar cheese has been produced in Cheddar since the twelfth century. To this day, it is still stored in the Cheddar Caves to mature.

Talking about cheese, France’s President Charles de Gaulle once asked: “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” Actually, the UK has more than 700 varieties. This made my thoughts to drift to the topic of the day – Brexit. No, not whether British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would be able to govern Britain, which has nearly three times more cheese varieties than France. I began to think about economic issues – in particular, ‘designation of origin’, which is also known as ‘geographical indication’, or simply GI.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation, a GI is a sign used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation associated with that origin. To function as a GI, a sign must identify a product as originating in a given place. In addition, the qualities, characteristics or reputation of the product should, essentially, be due to the place of origin. Since the qualities depend on the geographical place of production, there is a clear link between the product and its place of origin or production.

If you believe Cheddar cheese to be protected as a GI within the European Union (EU) or to be covered by EU trade agreements and trade preferences, then you are mistaken. This is quite odd, don’t you think? This is because the EU is renowned for being quite protective of its goods and has a tendency to designate and protect them as GIs.

My thoughts next turned to South Africa – particularly the Southern African Customs Union and Mozambique (Sacum)-UK Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which “effectively rolls over and replicates the terms of trade present in the existing Southern African Development Community (SADC)-EU EPA, including in respect of tariffs, quotas, rules of origin, and health and safety regulations”.

Under the present SADC-EU EPA, South Africa committed to protecting 251 GI names of the EU, comprising 105 agricultural products and foodstuffs (including mainly fruits, vegetables, cereals, cheeses, meat and fisheries products), 5 beers, 120 wines and 21 spirits. The EU, in turn, committed to protecting 105 GI names of South Africa, comprising three agricultural products and foodstuffs – Honeybush tea, Rooibos tea and Karoo lamb – and 102 wines.

The EPA requires that the GIs be protected against any direct or indirect commercial use of the name, any misuse, imitation or recreation, any other false or misleading indication concerning the origin, nature or essential qualities of a like product, and misleading consumers as to the true origin of a like product.

This raises the question: Will the UK and South Africa perpetuate the GIs in the EPA, remove them completely or expand the existing EU list of GIs. Many a question remains.

Could the reason for a hastily concluded Sacum- EU EPA, in the words of chef James Beard, be that “good cheese needs good companions”?