The rendering of authenticity: an analysis of representations of the breakfast cheese of the Odenwald forest

The purpose of this work is to understand how producers of food specialties confer authenticity in different media, namely in brochures and advertisements of producers and connected actors (such as tourist offices, NGOs). To this end, we chose a German PDO cheese called “Odenwälder Frühstückskäse” which is produced by only one German dairy, as a case study. The analysis of the promotional material shows that the PDO label is not considered an influential representation by producers since they tend to use other devices to confer authenticity