Jamón Serrano 

As we have seen in previous years, the Fundación del Jamón Serrano Español will be present at the 7th World Ham Congress, which will take place in the Portuguese city of Ourique from May 28-31.

As part of the scientific program at the congress, the president of the Fundación, José Ramón Godoy, will take part on the Panel for Ham Characterization and Certification with a talk on "Serrano Ham, TSG or PGI?" He will present the work done by the Spanish ham sector to obtain a specialized quality designation for Spanish Serrano ham, providing more effective international protection and opening up greater possibilities for promotion in both domestic and overseas markets.

The current Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) status of Serrano ham contains several loopholes which hinder the management and application of the possibilities offered by other quality designation categories: PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) and PGI (Protected Geographical Indication), which offer a greater protection margin and greater possibilities for brand management, in addition to the protection they afford and the distinction of coming from a specific geographic area.

The Spanish Serrano ham production sector has therefore decided to consider a strategy which includes actions aimed at bridging these gaps, providing a sturdier guarantee for the product and improving protection, promotion and projection channels. All of this, without losing any of the qualities of Serrano ham recognized in markets the world over - that marked, traditional character afforded by the geographic configuration and conditions which are unique to Spain.

The Fundación will also participate in the social activities of the Congress with slicing demonstrations and tasting sessions of Fundación Serrano ham for all participants, guests, institutions and media representatives.

The Institutional and Promotional Activity of the Fundación

As part of the institutional activity of the Fundación, we recently participated in the European Commission Consultative Group for Agricultural Production, held in Brussels. There, issues of vital importance to our Serrano ham were addressed, such as the possibility of transforming TSG to PGI, and other points related to the protection of Quality Designations, as we worked to implement EU Regulation 1151/2012 on quality schemes for agricultural products and foodstuffs, which include Serrano ham.

The Fundación was also invited to participate in the AECOC Meat and Meat Products Congress, a forum of great interest for analyzing the evolution and trends of our sector. In this setting, we offered a presentation on our promotion, communication, training and information activities, and stressed the need within the meat product sector to transmit to the consumer the valuable properties and characteristics of the product in a sector in which negative news is often the norm.

In the promotional sphere, the Fundación is successfully carrying out the first phase of its international Promotion Plan for this year, after wrapping up activities in Germany, Denmark and Japan during the first quarter, and continuing with a marked presence in Vietnam and Poland during the second quarter.

During the month of February, the Fundación traveled to Germany for a full program of sales presentations and promotional activities organized at catering schools, as well as institutional events and workshops in Munich and Berlin for restaurateurs, consumer motivators and the media.

The Fundación's second visit was to Denmark, a market with high buying power and unquestionable interest for Spanish ham companies. There, we participated in the Copenhagen Food Fair, the country's main food fair, as part of the "Original Flavors. The Mediterranean Essence" program. Our participation in the Food Fair included tastings and show-cooking, as well as training sessions for catering students and presentations for the authorities, press, importers and the hotel-catering sector.

As a complementary activity to our promotional activities in northern Europe, we organized the second annual visit for a group of German, Polish and Danish journalists so they could discover first-hand the Serrano ham production, control and quality processes by visiting several Fundación drying sheds to see the quality control, production and certification processes.

And finally, the Fundación has been present in several important Asian markets. We participated -together with the OECE (Spanish Meat Export Office), of which we are members- in Foodex, the prestigious Japanese food fair held in Tokyo, organizing a series of presentations in the Japanese capital. We were also present at the seventh edition of Food & Hotel Vietnam (FHV), a food festival held recently in Ho Chi Minh City, considered one of the most important and prestigious international food fairs in Asia, bringing together specialists in the food sector (producers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, supermarket chains...) from Vietnam and other Asian markets.