Looks great, we’ll take 99,995 more. (Photo: Adam Berry/Bloomberg News)While most Americans have been more concerned with the fate of the on-again, off-again — on-again — bailout of U.S. automakers, food industry observers have been writing, and joking, about another recent government bailout that got done a whole lot faster, of Italy’s Parmesan producers.
As Corriere della Sera reported in October, and The Wall Street Journal explained last week,
The world is bailing out banks and car companies. Italy is coming to the rescue of parmigiano cheese.
In an effort to help producers of the cheese commonly grated over spaghetti, fettuccine and other pastas, the Italian government is buying 100,000 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano and donating them to charity.
Though demand for parmigiano is strong in Italy and abroad, producers have been struggling for years to make money, putting the future of Italy’s favorite cheese at risk. …
Italian consumers seem to support the cheese bailout, which also includes a purchase of 100,000 wheels of another grating variety, Grana Padano. The operation will cost €50 million.
To pay for the parmigiano wheels, the Italian government is dipping into a special European Union fund meant to help feed needy people.
According to Reuters’ Deepa Babington, the core problem is that
The large round blocks of cheese now command a wholesale price of only 7 euros to 7.5 euros per kilogram ($9.61-$10.29 per 2.2 lb), while adhering to the strict guidelines to make Parmesan mean a minimum of 8 to 8.5 euros per kilogram is needed just to cover costs.
As The Journal’s Davide Berretta wrote, authentic Parmesan — known more correctly as Parmigiano-Reggiano — is made only by “about 430 small, family-owned businesses that dot the plains outside the northern city of Parma.”
A European court ruled earlier this year that only cheese made in this region can be called Parmesan, but the region’s cheesemakers have to adhere to these strict production guidelines if they want to keep their corner on the market. So, as the Journal reported:
There’s little parmigiano makers can do — partly because producers have to follow strict legal requirements for their cheese to obtain the official “Parmigiano Reggiano” seal of approval.
The milk that goes into parmigiano has to come exclusively from hay-fed cows that are milked twice a day. Then each wheel needs to ripen for at least a year. While they ripen, parmigiano wheels usually sit in stacks in a large shed. A big machine moves between the stacks, brushing and turning each wheel once a week. The room is heated in the winter and cooled in the summer.
In an interview with the BBC — streamed this week on the World Service podcast NewsPod — Leo Bertozzi, director of the Consorzio del Formaggio Parmigiano-Reggiano, tried hard to avoid the implication that the Italian government’s decision to purchase 100,000 wheels of the cheese was, in fact, a bai-out. Mr. Bertozzi stressed that the cheese would be used to feed the poor and said he was glad his industry could be involved in that noble effort.
The Journal notes that producers of another type of Italian cheese that was not purchased in mass quantities by the government certainly see it as a bailout, and they are not happy to have been left out.
“We’ve never received a single dime in state aid,” complains Vincenzo Oliviero, who heads the association of buffalo mozzarella producers.
To be more precise, the Journal wrote that mozzarella makers are “making a stink.” One interesting side note to the coverage of the cheese bailout in the English-language press is that it seems to have inspired a sort of arms race of punning. The Journal’s article came with the headline “Hard Times for Parmigiano Makers Have Italy Ponying Up the Cheddar.” Not to be outdone, the Telegraph’s recounting of the story came with a photo caption advising a man pictured with a wheel of Parmesan to “Say cheese.” The Age, in Australia, went with “Mozzarella makers cheesed off at parmesan bail-out.” The Times of London claimed to see a regional divide in Italy as a result of the policy: “North says hard cheese as parmesan subsidy grates with struggling southern mozzarella makers.”
But no one took things quite so far as the author of a Financial Times editorial who left no pun unturned:
Producers of parmigiano in the Emilia-Romagna region smell the pungent whiff of trouble. With many selling their cheese at below cost, parmigiano makers are facing the prospect of going out of business – some are even using their cheese as collateral against bank loans they are using to pay for workers’ salaries. Now Luca Zaia, the big cheese for agriculture in the Italian government, has intervened, announcing a €50m bail-out for the celebrated formaggio.
The move has already grated producers of other cheese varieties. Makers of buffalo mozzarella, for instance, fear that without dipping into a fondue of government cash they too may fall by the whey-side. The blood of some economic observers has curdled at the thought of the Italian government rescuing any and every industry facing difficulty. Unlike the cheese itself, the case for protecting parmigiano has not been easy for some to digest.
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