Animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming has launched a campaign to highlight poor welfare standards on Italian dairy farms that supply milk for Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses.
Covert filming at nine farms in the Po Valley region showed emaciated animals with sores on their legs, struggling to walk and living in cramped and dirty conditions. CIWF also said that dairy cows in the Po Valley region were habitually kept in sheds year round.
The charity has launched the campaign, dubbed Not On My Pasta, to increase consumer awareness and encourage them to shun the cheeses in favour of brands with guaranteed welfare standards or vegetarian and vegan alternatives.
CIWF said it hoped to urge farmers to guarantee dairy cows a minimum of 100 days at pasture per year as a result of the campaign, but it told The Grocer it did not currently plan to ‘name and shame’ individual farms in the hope the sector would engage with the campaign.
“Almost all Parmesan and Grana Padano cheese comes from zero-grazed cows,” said the campaign group. “Even the EU Organic certification does not ensure pasture access and the vast majority of Parmesans and Grana Padanos in British supermarkets come from zero-graze farms.”
CIWF director of campaigns Emma Slawinski added: “Extremely underweight, overworked animals are being treated like milk machines - some with signs of lameness and injury.
“Parmesan and Grana Padano cheeses are marketed as ‘high quality’ when the reality for the cows couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Farmers producing milk for Parmesan and Grana Padano have to follow rules set out by a document called a ‘disciplinare’. In the Grana Padano consortium’s disciplinare, there is no mention of animal welfare. It had not responded to The Grocer at the time of publication.
The Parmigiano Reggiano consortium did react to the exposé, however, and said all its farms complied with EU regulations. It added that although animal welfare did not fall under its remit, it was “particularly sensitive to the issue of quality of life for cows”.
“The consortium is engaged in a project to implement an animal welfare certification system,” said a Parmigiano Reggiano spokesman.
“We have started working with CReNBA (Centro di Referenza Nazionale per il Benessere Animale) to map the welfare of the chain, with the help of vets, then to implement a genuine animal welfare certification system.”
It told The Grocer that its certification system would be modelled on guidelines set out by CReNBA, which quote European Food Safety Authority recommendations that “dairy cattle should not be caused to stand or walk for prolonged periods on concrete floors or floors that are wet or covered in slurry”.
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