Article 23 of my country’s Agricultural Law, which was revised in December 2002, stipulates: Agricultural products that meet the requirements of the specified place of origin and production specifications may apply for the use of geographical indications of agricultural products in accordance with the provisions of relevant laws or administrative regulations.

This is another law besides the Trademark Law that mentions geographical indications. Since people’s understanding of geographical indications is based on the principle of intellectual property protection, and quality inspection agencies have been conducting relevant work for many years, when understanding the above provisions of the Agricultural Law, they generally think that the relevant laws or administrative regulations should be the Trademark Law" or "Regulations on the Protection of Geographical Indication Products".

However, because at present, my country’s geographical indication products are almost all agricultural products, and the agricultural department is directly faced with the two sets of industrial and commercial and quality inspection systems for many years in the application, registration and use supervision of agricultural product geographical indications. The lack of information has caused confusion and even complaints among agricultural producers and operators.

Therefore, with the advantage of being familiar with and convenient in the agricultural management process about the special quality of specific products in a certain region, the delineation of product geographical scope, and the monitoring of the production process, the agricultural department believes that The certification and management of geographical indications of agricultural products are relatively efficient and cause less disputes. Because of this, the Ministry of Agriculture issued the "Measures for the Management of Geographical Indications of Agricultural Products" in December 2007, and subsequently began to accept applications and issued a number of Ministry of Agriculture's special logos for geographical indications of agricultural products. According to this measure, applicants for registration of geographical indications of agricultural products are farmers' professional cooperative economic organizations, industry associations and other organizations determined by the local people's government at or above the county level based on specific conditions. This is similar to the applicant conditions accepted by the quality inspection department; but the difference is that The procedures of the Ministry of Agriculture require substantive review through review and objection, which is similar to the trademark review process15. Therefore, it can be said that the agricultural department currently wants to use its advantages in agricultural management to try to establish a system for the protection of geographical indications of agricultural products to overcome the shortcomings of the two systems of the industrial and commercial and quality inspection departments.

However, like the quality inspection department, although the agricultural department can test and judge a certain agricultural product according to its own departmental regulations and allow the use of certain special signs (i.e. geographical indications of agricultural products), due to the lack of legal On the basis of the level, there are great obstacles in law enforcement.