Made in Missouri

Beth Barham is quite finicky when it comes to what she puts on her plate. During winter months, for instance, organic California spinach will suffice for a proper salad. But come spring, when it is harvested locally, that green veggie simply must come from a farm near her home in Columbia.

She won't touch processed foods. She shops at farmers' markets; organic and natural food stores; and a gem of a grocery called The Root Cellar, which only sells Missouri-made products. Little, besides paper goods or an imported cheese — a wedge of Parmigiano Reggiano for pasta, say — will get Barham to a supermarket.

"Kraft has a Parmesan cheese," she points out, her small mouth drawn. "It tastes like shredded rubber. They call it Parmesan cheese and they have for a long time, and they think they should never be forced to give up the name just because Americans don't know where [Parma and Reggio Emilia, Italy] is. But Parmesan comes from Italy."

It's where food originates that obsesses Barham.

"I like to buy local food," she says in her singsong voice. "On the other hand, I recognize that a sheep's-milk cheese from Greece is a special treat, and I like to enjoy that in my life, too. I'm not looking for autarky. I'm looking for balance."

At 52, with an unassuming, earthy appearance of the kind you might expect of an avid Garrison Keillor fan, bird-watcher and scholar who specializes in rural sociology, Barham has taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia since 1999. Tablecloths are smoothed across the surfaces of her office, and a "hear no, see no, speak no" monkey lamp oversees a corner of her desk.

Disarming, soft-spoken and woefully modest — these are the adjectives that colleagues invariably equate with Professor Barham. "She's like this mild-mannered bulldog," says Hank Johnson, a vintner in Sainte Genevieve County. "When she gets her teeth on something, she holds on, and she's going to hold on until she gets the job done. But she's very calm, very low-key about it."

Fastened to a wall-length bulletin board is Barham's most telling decoration: a blue-and-gold metal insignia marked Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée Poularde de Bresse. Leftover from the packaging on a unique French poultry that she feasted on earlier this year, it's the tiny emblem of a controversial idea that the professor is pushing in Missouri — the creation of a European-style system of food and wine labeling, in which the place where the product was made — not the brand name — takes precedence.

Barham envisions the day when Missouri's Norton wine, native pecans and cured pork will bear appellation labels just as prestigious as those of Poularde de Bresse in France. Her three-year effort, called the Missouri Regional Cuisines Project, prompted the French Ministry of Agriculture last year to knight her. Barham's project is the first and only U.S. endeavor of its kind.

Known as Geographical Indications, the labels of origin are reserved for products that result from local human know-how and terroir,a French term implying a particular combination of climate, terrain and soil conditions that makes a food or wine distinct.

"When you eat foods that you know where they came from, you can better understand what makes them taste a certain way," says Rebecca Miller, a natural foods chef and marketing director at Whole Foods Market in Overland Park.

Beurre d'Isigny, for instance, is a sumptuous, salty butter made on the Isigny shores of Normandy, where cattle graze on grass loaded with iodine. Prosciutto di Parma, cured in Parma, Italy, comes from pigs that feed on whey left over from Parmigiano Reggiano production. And perhaps the most famous appellation label belongs to the bubbly made in northeast France — the only sparking wine allowed to carry the name Champagne.

Obtaining an appellation is a highly controlled process, with the government regulating nearly everything in the production chain — from growing to slaughtering to aging practices. In the case of wine, the strict rules of appellation boards can take years to develop, stipulating which grapes can be used and when they can be pruned and harvested. In the end, the appellation — signified by the AOC stamp in France, or the DOC in Italy — is a badge of honor for the producer.

Barham says it's the mom-and-pop farms and vintners that profit most from appellations. Unlike trademarks, which can be sold, inherited and affixed to products manufactured anywhere in the world, appellations are a form of intellectual property belonging to a specific region of producers. It's the European governments that typically pursue violators.

In the United States, though, the cost of purchasing and renewing trademarks — not to mention prosecuting those who pilfer them — falls on individuals, Barham points out. "Our little producers, they can't even think of buying trademarks or going after thieves. They wouldn't even know where to go get that legal defense." This difference becomes crucial for smaller producers as their goods become more popular. As soon as they're exported, "somebody is going to copy the name," Barham says.

"Take Parma Ham," Barham explains, referring to a prosciutto cured in the Parma region of Italy. "The producers' consortium spends $1 million a year to protect their name in fights all over the world. There was a famous instance in Canada of a company that's done all kinds of things with its packaging, like putting the Italian flag on it, to make the consumer think its product is from Italy. They even put 'authentic' on the label, which is total BS. It's not Parma Ham. The company just knows you will pay the premium if you think that's what you're getting."