Whether it was Pecorino or Fontina, when the rural aristocracy wanted to eat well, it was customary to go and buy “the day’s milk”. It was a gastronomic quirk of deep meaning: each house had its own style in serving cheese. Knowing where the sheep or cows had grazed, whether on heather meadows rather than among wild thistles, one could predict what aromas the cheese would have. That food was the “bread of the way” of the pilgrims. Cheese is as old as the men who interrogated it to advance science.
Now Europe, in the name of science, is about to erase with one stroke of the pen at least nine centuries of Italic civilization – the invention of Grana cheese by the Cistercian monks of the Chiaravalle Abbey, in the Milanese countryside dates back to 1135 – at least five millennia of anthropological evolution, at least five hundred years of scientific investigation around the miracle of the curd.
If there were still Pantaleone da Confienza – fifteenth-century physician and great doctor of the University of Pavia – author of Summa latticinorumthe world’s first treatise on dairy science and technology, would be heartbroken to know that cheese made from animal milk is about to disappear. But even Alexander Fleming would not have given us penicillin if Gorgonzola, Roquefort or his Scottish Shropshire had not existed: blue cheeses.
Well by next spring in Europe there will be a “milk” without cows, a “cheese” without sheep. For Italy, but not only, it will be a mortal blow.
EFSA – the Authority that authorizes the marketing of food on the continent and is, ironically, based in a food homeland like Parma – is about to give the green light to “milk-not milk” produced by fermentation in laboratories. The step forward came when this important EU institution, regardless of the hurdles posed to it by the agricultural ministers of 17 EU countries and Parliament itself, decided to simplify the authorization procedures for so-called “novel foods”.
Translated, it means that Grana Padano, Parmigiano Reggiano and the other 80 Italian DOP cheeses will have to compete with laboratory-produced curds that have never experienced that magnificent transformation of grass into milk.
The conflict that began as a political one is becoming economic. The Green deal wanted by the President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen and which she entrusted to her deputy Frans Timmermans, a Dutchman with a strong stance against livestock farming, in agriculture has become the Farm to Fork which is a declaration of war on animal husbandry. The reason? It is believed – wrongly because many studies refute this thesis – that stables are responsible for CO emissions2 and methane capable of altering the atmosphere.
It was thought that with Timmermans’ exit, returned to his country, the matter had been closed. And instead Von der Leyen, perhaps to regain the consensus of the Greens which allows her to remain at the top of Europe, has relaunched the Green deal in its entirety.
In addition to cars, the fight against animal husbandry has resumed – it serves to weaken the agricultural sector overall for which they also want to cut the funds – supported by Teresa Ribera, former vice-president of the Spanish Council, commissioner in pectore for the Green deal and icon of the world of the green left. This time, however, the president of the EU Commission goes through the side door: she entrusts EFSA with the task of promoting “novel foods” as alternatives to meat. Filiera Italia and Coldiretti have noticed this in recent weeks as they, with president Ettore Prandini and 13 other agricultural organizations from eight different countries, wrote to the head of EFSA Bernhard Url and Sandra Gallina, general director of health and food safety in Brussels, a letter of formal notice recalling: «To authorize foods created in laboratories through cellular replication, 17 governments and the European Parliament have asked that the precautionary principle be followed: clinical trials, scientific examinations and an authorization process equal to drugs».
EFSA did not respond and now there is a risk of revolt in Europe. It is clear that the intention in Brussels is to close all the stables: the Commission has rejected a bill by Viktor Orbán which seeks to ban – as has already been done in Italy with the Lollobrigida-Schillaci law – the production and marketing of meat synthetic and the Court of Justice has ruled that plant products that imitate meat can legitimately be called meat.
EFSA already has the application for authorization on the table – the green light is expected next March – of foie gras produced in the laboratory. We start there because few are willing to defend the practice of gavagethe forced stuffing of geese, but the next step will be the authorization of milk without cows and therefore the tombstone that falls on our cheeses.
The reason is political – eliminating the stables – but also technical: producing milk in the laboratory is easier and the authorization protocols have already been adopted by four states outside the EU: Singapore, Israel, the USA and Canada. It is no coincidence that the letter of protest to EFSA was signed – and it is the first time this has happened – by Cesare Baldrighi, president of Origin, which brings together practically all the Italian PDOs, by Renato Zaghini, president of the Grana Padano Consortium, and by Nicola Bertinelli, president of the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium.
For Italy it is a very serious potential damage: the dairy supply chain is worth 19 billion (Italy produces 12.7 million tons of milk from 24 thousand farms) and our cheeses are among the best-selling in the world. Buffalo mozzarella is exported at 40 percent of production equal to almost 56 thousand tons, Provolone which reaches seven thousand tons is sold abroad for over 38 percent, almost half of the 5.2 million forms of Gorgonzola are exported across the border. The champions are Grana Padano (a turnover of 3.7 billion euros, of which 1.9 abroad, with 5.2 million wheels produced by 142 dairies) to which is added Trentingrana (63.4 million turnover of 95 thousand wheels) and Parmigiano Reggiano (over 4 million wheels for a turnover of 3.1 billion of which 1.34 from exports).
Europe is not interested in these numbers even if 155 million tonnes of milk are produced every year on the continent with France, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain – this is the order of ranking – covering 70 percent of the production. Furthermore, EFSA is about to accept the request of Remilk, the Israeli multinational that has patented the use of the beta-lactoglobulin protein.
It involves taking the DNA of cows and grafting it into genetically modified bacteria which are fermented more or less like beer. The process requires a lot of water and energy, but green Europe likes them so much to the point that Remilk – an Israeli multinational led by Aviv Wolf and Ori Cohavi – has received 120 million dollars in funding to set up the largest plant in Kalundborg, Denmark in the world (70 thousand square meters) for precision fermentation.
In Canada, Israel and Singapore, Remilk has already been given the green light to sell yogurt and cheese. Furthermore, in Holland and Denmark the EU has financed start-ups that develop alternative proteins to meat. The Dutch Vivici – owned by the New Zealand Finterra – produces at the Biotech Campus Delft and already sells dairy-like proteins to those who synthesize insulin, enzymes for bread and cheese. CEO Stephan van Sint Fiet claims that «Vivici will be a leader in precision fermentation that will contribute to a future-proof food system because Europe is the promised land of novel food».
Staying on milk, the industrialization of the patent by Nurit Argov-Argaman of the University of Jerusalem has also arrived in Europe, which produced human milk from the extraction of breast cells from women who have undergone aesthetic mastectomy. His Wilik is supported by Danone which produces infant milk under the Mellin, Milupa and Aptamil brands. The same technology was also developed in California where Leila Strickland and Michelle Egger founded Biomiq. But from Europe comes another “Frankenstein milk” intended for children: it is the one extracted from Escheria coli, a bacterium fermented to extract the oligosaccharides of human milk. Also about to knock at EFSA are Ivy Farm Technologies, a company born from the University of Oxford, Meatly and Respect Farmes, the latter supported by community funds, engaged in the production of laboratory meat. The process is more complex than that of milk: it involves fermenting muscle cells in enormous bioreactors, stabilizing them with antibiotics, and maintaining them with a culture broth extracted from the fetuses of cows or other animals. There are many doubts about the environmental impact of these bioreactors.
Meatly has already received approval to market British-grown meat. It is unlikely that EFSA would say no to a request. Having simplified the authorization procedures is in fact an announcement that these types of food are about to arrive on the table. For Italy it would be further damage. The fresh meat supply chain (in addition to cow meat, pigs, rabbits, sheep and poultry) is worth around 10 billion euros and 9.2 billion is the turnover of cured meats (we eat around 17 kilos each) of which 2.2 from exports which have a growing trend (+8.7 percent). What is not being done for the Green deal. n
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