German producers have sparked a dispute by filing an opposition to a Turkish application to grant the döner kebab’s special status at the EU level, initiating a six-month period to resolve disagreements.
A Turkish application to the European Commission for the döner kebab to be given similar EU recognition as the Neapolitan pizza and Spain’s jamon serrano has been opposed by Germany, sources close to the issue have told Euronews.
As reported, in April Türkiye filed an application to register the name döner in Europe so that it can be used only by those producers conforming to the registered production method and product specifications.
Very much not the case in Germany. I’m not sure the German requirements are even that dissimilar to what Turkey came up with… which shouldn’t be surprising, they’re practically written by Turks in the sense that “this is what this thing means” in German food law is always based on “this is what good and proper cooks preparing it agree on”, and when the guidelines were set those all happened to have been Turkish immigrants.
Not to mention that the industry association complaining are precisely those Turkish immigrants.
I’ve seen the ingredients on commercial döner meat in a German Döner shop. It’s mostly chicken skin
Edit: “meat”, and downvote all you like, it doesn’t make it untrue
Section 2.511.7, page 65 in the pdf. 18% skin max and no ground meat at all in the case of poultry Döner. If you saw more you either a) didn’t see a Döner but a Drehspieß or b) should’ve contacted authorities.
Birds have skin what do you suppose we do with it, throw it away?
It didn’t have percentages, just a list of ingredients and, from what I know, they are listed in order of amount
I meant the info as support for the comment that it was just congealed meat. There were a lot of starches and binders as well
Then you saw something, but definitely not Döner.
I’ll grant that it’s easier to hide shoddy meat if use lots of spices and sell it mixed with veggies compared to serving it on a plate with rice but that doesn’t mean that you can sell just anything as Döner in Germany. The same overall dish concept with stuff shaved from a ground meat skewer isn’t nearly as nice, but it’s still better than McDonalds so it has its place on the market… as “Ground meat skewer pocket Döner-style”, not “Döner”. And the Turkish initiative would change nothing about that.
Side note there’s a lot of things to look out for when it comes to the quality of a German Döner, how the meat is cut from the skewer is not one of them. It literally makes no difference, yet the initiative wants to regulate the bloody length of the bloody blade. It’s pointlessly over-restrictive. Pizza Neapolitana also regulates a lot of things but not the size of the pizza shovel – as long as it fits into the oven and it’s a comfortable size for the cook to handle, who cares? It also doesn’t try to define “Pizza”, only “Pizza Neapolitana”, and if the initiative was restricting itself to the term “Bursa Döner” or something noone would mind.
It may have been some sort of “style” but it was what they were putting on the spit to cut from and being sold as “döner” on the menu.
Actually the pizza definitions do specify the thickness of the crust
Then you should have contacted the authorities. Also shops using cheap meat don’t do their own skewers they buy them frozen – you can also get good meat in frozen form, but if a shop makes their own skewer they’re not going to use shoddy ingredients that makes no economical sense at all.
Sensibly so, there’s pizza styles with much thicker crusts than Neapolitana (also Italian ones). Not sure that’s necessary for Döner simply because noone is cutting the meat off in slabs. 2mm minimum btw sounds rather thick. 5mm are definitely too thick. Heck that’s an acceptable lower range for Wienerschnitzel. The maximum makes sense, a minimum not really.
And, as said: If they want to register Bursa Döner to be like that, a specific type of meat without spices and cut in rather thick slices, they’re free to (though regulating the length of the blade is still BS). But why shouldn’t there be other Döner beside that.
I’ll let someone with more skin in the game take care of it. If people notice, they’ll go somewhere else, if they don’t, then I guess that shop gets away with it.
I thought the sizes were pretty big. It’d end up looking like a steak burrito