Coldiretti: No to yogurt without milk

Coldiretti is celebrating the positive result that for now seems to have protected consumers from the possibility of finding on the shelves yogurt without milk, made from powdered milk by virtue of a revision of Law no. 138/1974, which concerns "Rules regarding the prohibition of reconstituting powdered milk for human consumption" — an amendment that would in fact have been blocked following a favorable hearing in the Agriculture Committee of the Chamber of Deputies.

The amendment of the rule is justified by the need to reduce transport costs, since the powder takes up less space than fresh milk, yet without considering — Coldiretti denounces — the strong impact it has on the qualitative characteristics of the product on sale. A harm to consumers and producers because — Coldiretti maintains — it would allow the use of cheap powdered milk imported from non-EU countries instead of the good fresh milk of the Italian countryside.

The concern appears justified by the fact that 3 of the top 4 European yogurt producers are foreign and cover over 60% of the Italian national market. And the fear is that accepting the amendment of the law would work entirely to the disadvantage of the biggest consumers, who today turn out to be the younger generations, strongly influenced by advertising that over the years has correctly portrayed yogurt as a healthy food.
Every Italian consumes on average 7 kilograms of it per year, and in the first half of 2011, despite the crisis, the quantities purchased by Italian families grew by one percent.

The harm to Italian milk production was then calculated in light of the consumption just described: considering in fact that 1.2 kg of fresh milk is needed to obtain 1 kg of yogurt, replacing it with powder could lead to up to 360 million kg less Italian milk being consumed in a year, according to Coldiretti's calculations.

As a result of EU and national legislation, it is already possible to sell on the market wine "without grapes" — that is, obtained from the fermentation of fruit, from raspberries to currants — but also cheese "without milk," partly replaced by casein and caseinates to obtain stretched-curd cheeses, while a national law provides that citrus-flavored beverages can be colored on condition that they contain just 12 percent of real citrus juice.

Coldiretti is waging an all-out battle against this trend, which it accuses of harming Italian agri-food production.