Field guide · labels
The logo protects the name. It doesn't grade the taste.
PDO, PGI and TSG are legal protections for food names — what each mark requires of the food behind it, what none of them can promise, and how to check a name on the official register.
Read with sources
The calm answer: those small logos are legal designations, not medals. In the UK and the EU, schemes for protected geographical food and drink names exist to defend registered names against misuse and imitation — a producer who uses one must follow a registered specification that ties the product to its place or its traditional recipe. What each of the three marks promises is precise, and the gaps between them are the interesting part. Source: GOV.UK on UK GI schemes (opens in a new tab).
Three logos, three promises
The three marks you meet on shelves are PDO (protected designation of origin), PGI (protected geographical indication) and TSG (traditional speciality guaranteed). The first two are the red-and-yellow and blue-and-yellow logos travellers notice on cheese, ham and oil; the third protects something different entirely — a traditional recipe rather than a place.
All three are legal protections for the name itself. GOV.UK frames the UK schemes as safeguards of authenticity and origin: a registered name is protected from misuse or imitation, no individual or business owns it, and any producer can use it — provided they follow the registered specification and the verification that goes with it. Source: GOV.UK on UK GI schemes (opens in a new tab).
The schemes sit in two jurisdictions and two rulebooks. In Great Britain the UK GI schemes run on the retained version of Regulation 1151/2012 — the text cited throughout this guide. In the EU — which also covers food sold in Northern Ireland — the same family of marks now lives in Regulation (EU) 2024/1143, which entered into force on 13 May 2024 and repealed 1151/2012, folding food, wine and spirits into a single framework; the mark definitions below are materially the same on both sides. Many names hold status under both schemes. Source: GOV.UK on UK GI schemes (opens in a new tab) Source: European Commission on EU quality schemes (opens in a new tab).
PDO: everything happens in the place
PDO is the strictest tie between name and geography. The Regulation's definition requires that the quality or characteristics of the product be essentially or exclusively due to its geographical environment — including natural and human factors — and that every step of production, processing and preparation takes place inside the defined area. Source: Regulation (EU) 1151/2012 (retained for GB), Article 5 (opens in a new tab).
Read it as a near-complete-loop promise, with one defined exception. The making and the finishing must happen inside the named area, and the raw material normally does too — but the Regulation lets long-recognised names, protected before May 2004, source raw materials (limited to live animals, meat and milk) from a larger or different area, where that area is defined, special production conditions apply and controls verify them. A PDO cheese's milk can, in principle, come from beyond the named boundary when its registered specification says so — the specification, not the logo alone, carries the sourcing detail. Source: Regulation (EU) 1151/2012 (retained for GB), Article 5 (opens in a new tab).
That is why PDO names are the hardest to imitate lawfully: a producer outside the area cannot borrow the name even if the recipe is identical, because the place is part of the specification, not just the method.
PGI: at least one stage
PGI keeps the geographic link but loosens it: at least one stage of production, processing or preparation must happen in the defined area, and the product's quality, reputation or other characteristics must be attributable to that origin. Source: Regulation (EU) 1151/2012 (retained for GB), Article 5 (opens in a new tab).
The name can carry reputation alone — the food does not have to prove its character comes from the soil, only that the place and the name genuinely belong together. That is the formal difference from PDO, and it is why PGI is the larger register: it covers products whose ingredients travel in but whose identity is local.
The site already tells the worked example: Antep Baklavası and Gaziantep Baklavası hold a protected geographical indication, and the baklava field note sets out what that registration does and does not say about the tray in front of you.
TSG: traditional recipe, anywhere
TSG drops the geography altogether. Under the Regulation, a traditional speciality guaranteed registration protects a name where the product is made from traditional raw materials or shows a traditional composition, or follows a traditional production or processing method — whoever makes it, wherever it is made. Source: Regulation (EU) 1151/2012 (retained for GB), Article 18 (opens in a new tab).
The name itself has to earn its keep too: it must be traditionally used to refer to the product, or identify its traditional character. So a TSG is a recipe-protection scheme — the promise is that the thing behind the name is made the traditional way, not that it comes from one valley.
That makes TSG the odd one out in the logo family: PDO and PGI answer "where", TSG answers "how". A protected name without a map pin is not a lesser designation — it is certifying a different thing.
What protection doesn't promise
The schemes protect the name, and the name only. A PDO, PGI or TSG mark says the product followed a registered specification and was verified against it — it is not a ranking of taste, a nutritional standard, a welfare certification or a safety guarantee. The UK's own framing is "authenticity and origin", and that is the whole of the promise. Source: GOV.UK on UK GI schemes (opens in a new tab).
Two quiet consequences follow. An unmarked version is not automatically inferior — plenty of excellent food sits outside the schemes entirely. And a marked product is not certified safe or healthy: the logo was never the instrument for that, so it cannot carry that weight.
Nor can a photograph check it: a picture of the logo suggests the claim was made, but whether the pack behind it followed the specification lives with the register and the producers' verification — not with the image. The photo guide draws the rest of that boundary.
Checking a name on the register
The registers are public and searchable. GOV.UK's protected food and drink names page lists the UK scheme registers — PDO and PGI together, TSG separately, plus spirits, wine and aromatised wine registers — with the specification behind each registered name. Source: GOV.UK protected names register (opens in a new tab).
The check that matters is scope: the UK registers cover names protected when sold in Great Britain, while products sold in Northern Ireland follow the EU schemes under Regulation 2024/1143. A name you met abroad may be protected in the EU but not registered in Great Britain, or carry both designations — the register is where you find out which. Source: GOV.UK on UK GI schemes (opens in a new tab) Source: European Commission on EU quality schemes (opens in a new tab).
And the calm closer: a mark is a starting point for curiosity, not a verdict. If a protected name is part of why a dish interests you, the stories section and the field notes cover what named foods carry — and a photo lookup can help identify the dish in front of you, while the register answers the name question itself.
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