Italy’s Traditional Foods Face EU Regulations Threatening Their Future
More deadly than the sword was the saying until a few decades ago, and today it is hard to find. Another sign of these rapidly changing times. The sin of greed remains carved among the capital vices, but who remembers it? Or pays more attention? Paradoxically, when agreeing on lunch and dinner border on the impossible and belts daily slides on the stretched floor, the sins of greed were feared; today, since any delicacy can please the palate, all calls for culinary restraint have fallen. With one punishment: cholesterol & C., sneering, leading to forced mortification.
A sinister law of the counterpoint has shifted us from fasting to diet. Yet, the greed continues its triumph, since Italian delicacies have been cataloged, laid out in a decree from the Minister for Agricultural Policies, Pecoraro Scanio, and presented as a proud aspect of Italian taste. The official delicacies, let’s call them that, currently number 2,171.
In fact, according to Pecoraro (who seems to have had a special eye for pecorino cheese), they are destined to expand. Why the decree? Because the European Union has issued hygiene standards so strict that nearly all traditional Italian products, products of centuries-old traditions and craftsmanship, would be destined to disappear.
Products at risk and Italian specialties
Famous products, such as Colonnata lardo, fossa cheese, Campotosto mortadella, the very local Bagòss cheese, and the entire series of local cheeses and fresh cheeses, not to mention cured meats, would be outside the standards. Just like unique beverages such as Calabria’s fragolino, oils, honeys, or unprocessed legumes like chickpeas, spelt, Sulmona’s red garlic, Colfiorito lentils.
These specialties are now listed in the decree, and more will be added as the list will be updated in January. All aimed at requesting from the European Union an exemption from hygiene regulations that seek to turn (perhaps rightly, perhaps excessively) what resembles a laboratory into a near operating room.
The cataloging of these unique foods, distilled over the centuries and passed down through tradition and the skill of small, precious producers, sees among the top items 578 fruit and vegetable products, whether natural or processed; then bread and fresh pasta, cookies, and sweets (574); meats and cured products (424); cheeses number only 376, but that figure is expected to rise. The least represented are condiments: butter, oils, and margarine.
The regions most rich in delicacies are Tuscany, with 282 specialties; Veneto, 204; Lombardy, 203; Piemonte, 162. Sicily has only cataloged 64, but that is surely due to insular laziness.
There is always time and way to remedy this: according to Pecoraro Scanio, the list should… grow to as many as three thousand specialties. What will happen in the near future? The products in the decree will be protected by a trademark.
Suspecting that their prices will rise is to think badly, but it is predictable. It can, at least partially, comfort a fantasy: in the absence of the decree and with the European prohibition advancing technologically, these products would fall into clandestinity. It’s easy to imagine that paradoxically, at a time when Italy’s food abundance is at its peak, an underground market for these products would open, with sky-high prices… And greed, far from killing… gluttons, would at least wound their wallets.