Champagne. Neapolitan pizza. Now döner kebabs?

0:01NPR.

0:11Darian Woods, good to see you. Rilla Rubin, Planet Money producer. Now, where in the world are you? I am in Berlin for a fellowship, and I want to take you on a little field trip to a place at the center of a new battle over regulation and competition. We are going to a Doner Kebab shop in Berlin. Okay, Doner Kebabs, you know, those sandwiches that have minced or sliced meat. Not my thing, personally, as a vegetarian, but they are delicious for the people who eat them. I have seen vegan Doner Kebabs, for what it's worth. But yeah, Doner Kebabs, they originally come from Turkey, and they are super popular all around Europe, including here in Germany.

0:51People here spend almost 2.5 billion euros on them every year, according to an industry estimate. And the other day, I met Arif Kellisch, owner of Hazar Fresh Food in Schöneberg. He showed me around the kitchen. There's a workstation where bread is being grilled. There's a section for sauces, another for salads, and then there is the meat. Mmm, delightful. Picture this giant, greasy log of meat, like the size of a fire hydrant, rotating on a spit in front of a heat source. But soon, the way Arif makes donor kebabs might have to change. because Turkey filed an application with the EU, which said, donor kebabs originally come from Turkey.

1:40They are culturally significant for us. So if people want to make donor kebabs in the EU, they should be made the Turkish way. This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Willa Rubin. And I'm Darian Woods. Today on the show, a spicy feud over the donor kebab and a little-known regulation that could dish out some real economic consequences. This message comes from LinkedIn ads. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. That's why you need LinkedIn ads. You can target your buyers by job title, company, role, seniority, and skills. All the professionals you need to reach in one place.

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3:04Enable buyers to find and purchase items fast. Learn more about the technology, insights, and support available at amazonbusiness.com. People have been making doner kebabs in Turkey for hundreds of years. Some historians point to the recipe being found on manuscripts as far back as 1546. And as people from Turkey moved all around the world, so have donor kebabs. When the donor kebab reached Germany, it morphed into a sandwich with more kinds of meats to choose from. Veal and turkey, not just chicken, beef or lamb. People added veggies, salads, sauces galore, and the style became ubiquitous around Europe.

3:46Andrea Zappalaglio is a lawyer and professor at University of Sheffield, but he is originally from Italy. he has had a lot of donor kebabs in his day. Many times, many times. You know, maybe you went to a concert or you had your night out. Maybe you are hungry at 4 a.m. Well, we all had our favorite donor place. As long as it's spicy, I love it. I'd called Andrea to talk about his other area of specialty, geographical indications. Geographical indications. We've spoken about this on the indicator before. It's when products get special protections because of where they're made or where their ingredients come from.

4:26Exactly. Classic example is champagne. Those regional protections give champagne makers in the French region of champagne a little monopoly over the product. But in the EU, there's also another kind of protection for food and drinks. It's about how something is made. In the donor kebab case, Turkey, they want to register a traditional specialty guarantee. The traditional specialty guarantee. It's the kind of overlooked sibling of geographical indication. Andres says this status can be more of a political or cultural statement. Here is just a way to say that a donor is not just this, you know, generic, low-value, cheap street food.

5:10It's actually part of the Turkish tradition, and so we don't like that a Turkish product is trivialized in this way. Only 68 traditional specialty guaranteed products are registered in Europe, but they include some big ones, like Serrano ham from Spain, or perhaps the most famous example, Neapolitan pizza. Yes, according to EU law, when making Neapolitan pizza, chefs should use a spoon to place 70 to 100 grams of crushed peeled tomatoes in the center of the disc of dough. Then they should spread those tomatoes in a spiraling motion and in another spiraling motion, apply salt. To get the crust to rise, a chef has to hold their quote right hand at an angle of 45 to 60 degrees to the work surface, placing the disc of the dough on it and turning it with a synchronized movement of the left hand.

6:03I have a lot of questions. How is this going to be enforced? Are people out there with a protractor? There's a real enforcement question here. If they seriously want to sue every döner kebab place who doesn't respect these rules, well, good luck with that. Under Turkey's proposal, beef would be required to come from cattle that is, quote, at least 16 months old. It would be marinated with specific amounts of yogurt or milk, onion, salt, and thyme, as well as black, red, and white peppers. Then the final product must be sliced off the vertical spit into pieces three to five millimeters thick. Chicken would be similarly regulated.

6:43And if these rules are not followed... Well, technically, it means that you cannot use the term donor anymore unless you comply with the specification, of course. But you can't call it a donor at all, then? Technically speaking, no. So if this goes through, and if places in Europe still want to call what they're selling donor kebabs, then they would need to change what they're doing to meet the definition. But adapting is expensive. Some places might need to get different meats, ones that could be more expensive. They may need to marinate the meats differently. And most places, like Arif's, are small businesses.

7:21Arif's restaurant has been around for a long time. His grandpa actually started it in the 80s. R.F. spent lots of his childhood here. He tells me he started working here when he was 10. He would stand on a stack of crates to reach the meet. And let R.F. stop. Lots of places have loyal customer bases. R.F.'s worried the new changes might mean jodder kababs just don't taste as good. With all the changes, some places could shut down. Or the ones that remain might make up for new costs by raising prices. Which people do not want. People are, of course, sensitive to inflation right now. And here in Germany, it peaked at around 11 % a couple years ago.

8:03And when it comes to donor kebabs, Germans are especially sensitive about its price. The term donorflation has even been thrown around. Okay, they take it seriously. They really take it seriously. And Arif already had to raise prices because of pandemic-related inflation. He's not eager to do it again. In the Corona-Zeit, everything was so high. We repeatedly asked the organisation that filed Turkey's application for an interview, and they never got back to us. But the deputy chairman of the organisation did talk to the TV station Deutsche Welle, and he said it's about prestige for the donor kebab and money.

8:40We believe that this will be an economic plus for Turkey, and above all, will help the donors export performance. We did hear from Germany's agriculture office, which objected to Turkey's EU application. It told us it noted the application with astonishment and that it would be bad for the German food industry if the traditional specialty guarantee status goes through. This tug of war over donor kebabs, it's like a small millimeter thick slice of the perpetual larger balancing act over how to manage competition. Because say there's a product that's doing something special. Protection for that product is, of course, good for the people who make it.

9:22Maybe they get to raise their prices. But that protection could also wind up stifling innovation. Like, if you could only make Neapolitan pizza, maybe you would never get Chicago-style pizza. But back to Dona Kebabs, where are we with that case? I did speak to analysts at the European Commission. They're giving Turkey and Germany a few months to come up with a compromise. And if they can't, then the European Commission will issue a final ruling. I asked Arif what he would do if Turkey wins. and Doner Kebabs do get the special status. He said he would still sell Doner Kebabs, but under a different name.

10:00What name would you use instead of Doner?

10:07He would drop the E-R from Doner and just call it a Dona, D-O-N-A. Very clever. I guess a Dona is just as juicy as by any other name. I mean, what's in a name anyway? This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Valentina Rodriguez-Sanchez and Patrick Murray. It was fact-taped by Sarah Juarez. Kate Concanon edits the show and The Indicator is a production of NPR. This message comes from The Economist. Introducing The Economist Insider, a new video offering with twice-weekly shows featuring in-depth analysis and expertise to make sense of an increasingly complex and dangerous world.

10:49More at economist.com slash insider.

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