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Not really. It doesn’t really prevent competition. You’re welcome to make your own cheese (or whatever) that competes with the protected variant. You’re just not allowed to call it the same thing.
It’s more like a measure to prevent shitty corporate cost cutting and skimpflation strategies from ruining a thing into oblivion and ensuring that you can rely on a certain level of quality that is associated with the traditional product.
The system might have it’s downsides, but I’m definitely on board with the intent.
That’s part of why that move to coin that phrase was so powerful. There are real conspiracies/intelligence agency operations (like regime changes in several countries during the 20th century), and then there are completely idiotic ideas and takes (like flat earth) and ones that were never meant to be taken serious (like birds aren’t real).
That makes it really tedious to weed out the bullshit and distinguish it from the stuff that has substance.