Listen, New Zealand: I know we’re sibling rivals and all, but, jeez, you lot can be precious sometimes. You know, we let you win the rugby because it’s a sport hardly anyone in Australia actually cares about. (Instead of copying the Poms and buggering each other as a spectator sport, we went and invented our own, superior, football code.)
But, for all that, it doesn’t take much for Aussies to get Kiwis’ undies in a twist, whether it’s whining about Isaac Butterfield being “racist” to New Zealanders or Trevor Chappell bowling a grubber (OK, that one pissed off even Australians, but, let’s face it, Trev was the Zeppo of the Chappell brothers).
Then there was the Lord of the Rings stamp kerfuffle: when Australia Post released a licensed set of LOTR movie stamps, New Zealand had a right old whinge about Australia “stealing” “their” movie (conveniently ignoring the New Line Cinema branding all over the stamps). Never mind that Aus Post releases licensed stamp sets of everything from Bizet’s Carmen to The Emoji Movie. We didn’t see residents of Anaheim having a tanty when Aus Post issue a Disney’s Beauty and the Beast set, after all.
More recently, New Zealand is trying to occupy the hole in Communist China’s heart left by recalcitrant Australia – but you’re welcome to that one.
But trying to call dibs on manuka honey is some French-level bullshit, folks.
Manuka honey producers fear Australia could be frozen out of a billion dollar industry if the federal government does not help it fight a “ridiculous” legal push from New Zealand to trademark the name[…]
Australia is one of the main producers of manuka honey, with China, Japan and the UK among the biggest buyers of the superfood, which is also used in pharmaceutical and medical products.
But the use of the name manuka is currently the subject of a bitter trans-Tasman dispute.
At least the Frogs are on slightly solid ground when they complain that terroir naming rights are based on places where products like champagne, for instance, actually originated. Manuka trees are endemic to Australia and New Zealand. The earliest known honey use is from Spain.
Paul Callander, chairman of the Australian Manuka Honey Association, said the NZ government had committed more than $1 million towards a trademark action over the word “manuka” being led by a group of Kiwi producers from the Manuka Honey Appellation Society.
We’ve already had a bunch of Seppos pinch the name “Ugg boots” for themselves. Enough is enough.
The trademark request argues general geographical indicators are used for many other products, for example Barossa Valley wines, and would prefer Australian beekeepers call their product Tea Tree honey instead.
It also claims manuka is a Maori name inextricably tied to New Zealand, similar to the term champagne is to a region in France.
The Australian
Well, okay: honey is an English name, derived from Old English, a language inextricably tied to England.
So, we’ll call ours “tea tree honey”, if New Zealand agrees to call theirs “manuka bee shit”.
Anyway, manuka honey doesn’t hold a candle to the prince of honeys: Tasmania’s leatherwood honey. Only found in Tasmania.
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