What is italian sounding actually worth? Nobody knows, and the numbers prove it

Italian sounding is the pasta box with a tricolour made in Turkey, the Wisconsin «parmesan», the Danish «mozzarella», the «San Marzano style» tomato grown in California. Products that evoke Italy without being Italian.

The key word is evoke. In the great majority of cases there is no imitated trademark, no falsified label, no offence: there is a name that local law treats as generic, used legitimately. «San Marzano» is a cultivar name, and anyone may plant it anywhere. In the United States «parmesan» is a generic term with its own federal standard of identity.

Which is why counterfeiting and italian sounding are two distinct phenomena, and confusing them is the first cause of the numbers that do not add up. Counterfeiting is an offence and is counted through seizures. Italian sounding is a legal market, and to count it you first have to decide what goes in.

Anyone who has read an article on italian sounding in the past decade has met a figure in billions. The problem is that there are many, and they are not the same one.

Federalimentare said 54 billion in 2012 and 90 in 2018. Coldiretti said 60 in 2015, 100 in 2021, then 120, and in 2026 forty-two. Confartigianato said 54 across all sectors in 2017. In 2021 Ismea and Assocamerestero did the most rigorous thing: they measured a basket of eleven products in ten markets, found 10.4 billion, and extrapolated a global estimate of 79.2.

Set in a column, these figures do not describe a phenomenon growing or shrinking. They describe different measurements of different things. Between the 42 billion of 2026 and the 120 of shortly before there is a factor of three, and no market event explains a jump like that in that direction.

In 2021 the Italian fact-checking outlet Pagella Politica did the obvious thing: it went looking for the method. It contacted the organisations publishing those estimates and asked what sources and criteria sat behind the numbers.

The conclusion is blunt and worth more than any figure: none of the organisations discloses the sources and methodology used, and the requests produced no answers explaining them.

Without a stated method, an estimate cannot be verified. That does not mean it was invented: it means it cannot be checked, cannot be reproduced and cannot be compared with another. It is exactly why two organisations can publish 90 and 100 billion in the same period with nobody able to say which is right.

A scope problem sits on top. Some estimates cover every sector, others only food and farming. Some count the turnover of evocative products, others the earnings Italy is said to forgo, which is a different and harder quantity.

In 2018 the OECD published a measurement of food counterfeiting, with a stated method and based on customs data. The result for food products is around 4 billion euro.

Between that number and the 100 billion in circulation there is a factor of twenty-five, and the difference is not an error: they are measuring two different things. The OECD counts counterfeiting, which is to say the offence. The italian sounding estimates count a largely legal market of evocative products.

This does not make the phenomenon irrelevant, and takes nothing away from the fact that it removes market share from Italian producers. It does make one thing clear: when a newspaper writes that «fake Made in Italy is worth a hundred billion», it is bundling a crime and a legal market into a single phrase, and the reader has no way of separating them.

The phenomenon exists, and describing it does not require a contested figure. What can be said, and checked, concerns names.

Inside the European Union the protection works: in 2008 the Court of Justice held that «parmesan» constitutes an evocation of the Parmigiano Reggiano designation and cannot be used for other cheeses. Outside the Union the same word changes status: in the United States it is a generic name with a federal standard, and in Canada CETA protected several Italian designations while leaving «parmesan» free.

The same pattern governs raw materials. «San Marzano» is a cultivar, growable anywhere; what is protected is the long name, «Pomodoro San Marzano dell'Agro Sarnese-Nocerino DOP», which in 2024 covered 350 hectares.

It is the same distinction we found looking at twenty Italian products: protection attaches to a name in full, and the generic term stays free. Italian sounding is nothing more than the international version of that mechanism.

For anyone shopping, the macroeconomic figure is useless. What helps is being able to read a package, and that is a skill you acquire in two minutes.

A tricolour on a box means nothing and nobody forbids it. The full name of a designation, by contrast, is checkable: if it reads «Parmigiano Reggiano DOP» or «Pomodoro San Marzano dell'Agro Sarnese-Nocerino DOP», that product sits inside a written specification. If it reads «parmesan», «type», «style» or «Italian-style», it does not.

The second check is the origin of the raw material, which labels are required to state on several categories. A product processed in Italy from foreign raw material is perfectly legal, but it is a different thing from an Italian product, and the difference is written down.

The third is the European logo with the name of the certifying body. It is not an ornament: somebody behind it is checking.