Imagine a delicious dinner of pasta with meat sauce and grated parmesan. Add a salad of fresh mozzarella and Roman tomatoes sprinkled with Tuscan olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Maybe you’ll wash it down with some Amaretto liqueur.
A truly italian meal or was it?
What would you think if you found that actually none of theses products have touched Italian soil, but are products which bear the Italian flag colours, are given Italian sounding names or bear labels written in Italian. This can lead consumers into thinking they are buying an italian product. Until you read the small print and find it was actually produced in another country. This is not an illegal practise but they are deceptive.
According to Coldiretti, Italy’s farmers association, foods that look or sound Italian but are produced elsewhere amount to $66 billion in annual sales - nearly half the $135.5 billion worth of real Italian food that is sold worldwide in a year. The top buyers of fake Italian food are in Australia and the United States, where a mere 2 percent of “Italian” cheeses are actually made in Italy.
Gary Litman, vice president for European affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said it’s too late to rename imitation Italian products that are already firmly established. “You cannot change history that easily,” he said.
Parmesan cheese has countless imitations, especially grated, which can be found in the United States where there is a massive market for it.
The authentic Parmesan, called Parmigiano Reggiano in Italy, is produced solely in and around the northern town of Parma. It uses unpasteurized milk with no additives and the cows are fed specific fodder.
Italian Parma ham in Canada has to be sold under a different name as there is already a ham produced there which bears the trademark "Parma ham". Fabrizio Raimondi, spokesman for the Parma ham cooperative commented “To sell in Canada, our brand has become ’Original Prosciutto,”
Italian producers have launched a campaign making aware the situation, and hopefully boosting their own sales.
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