Yesterday I met a delegation of milk producers. Just recently some producers have started up a new type of milk enterprise, selling unprocessed milk direct to the public using milk distributors. A problem has arisen in relation to the measuring of the quantity that these machines give out. Some of these machines have recently been impounded because of this and this has created big problems for those who have invested in them.
Mr. Giuseppe Invernizzi, president of the Associazione Provinciale Allevatori di Como, Lecco e Varese {Provincial Association of Farmers of Como, Lecco and Varese) was a part of the delegation and he explained the problem so that we could work out some solutions.
I’m publishing the video of the meeting.

Text:

G.I.: I am Giuseppe Invernizzi, the president of Associazione Provinciale Allevatori di Como, Lecco e Varese and I have been working with milk for 30 years.
Seven years ago, when I was losing 10-20% of the farmers because farming was no longer breaking even, I wondered what farmers themselves could do. The response was for farmers to sell their milk direct to the consumer. Today it’s possible and safe to sell unprocessed milk from the point of view of health and hygiene, which is our biggest concern. How can it be done? A colleague, on holiday in Austria, saw some self-service automatic distributors of unprocessed milk.
In 2004 we imported the first of these machines from Switzerland.
Thanks for that. There are questions. First: Why has there been an evolution in the processing of milk? For health reasons. Why do you say that today it is no longer a problem?
G.I.: Because for almost ten years in Lombardy we are free of diseases that necessitated the processing of milk. These days, thousands and thousands of tests are done and there is no problem.

ADP: Who does the testing?
G.I.: The health service.

ADP: The testing has already been done?
G.I.: Yes regularly. This means that it is a product, like meat, fish and vegetables, that I buy unprocessed and then I decide whether to cook it or to use it as it is.

ADP: Today is it possible to sell unprocessed milk, or is it forbidden?
G.I.: Yes today it is already possible. There are many Ministerial circulars and we started in 2003.
We are talking of an average price of 1 euro a litre. This compares to the selling price of pasteurized milk of between 1.40 and 1.60 euro a litre.
Statistics gathered from Northern Europe where they have a mentality that is against raw products, using a sample of 14,800 children drinking unprocessed milk show that they had a reduction of 58% in cases of asthma and 38% in cases of allergies.
A really simple thing resolves at least three problems: a future for young dairy farmers who are coming back to this work, because at 1 euro a litre as opposed to the 0.33 that they get from the milk board is another world; many can work with this product and for example make cheese in-house; a massive saving as regards the environment, because the glass bottles are being reused, which, among other things, don’t have to travel hundreds of kilometres. Right now we have 400 farmers who are distributing unprocessed milk with 600 machines for about 100,000 people drinking it. This number is going up because of price increases. One of the companies that manufacture the distributors asked for their machine to be tested and certified and then they denounced the machines of their competitors as not having been certified. Thus these are now being impounded. All this in the name of selling more of that particular make of machine.

ADP: So, you feel the reason behind that is purely commercial? Is their no lobbying activity on the part of the pasteurized milk industry?
G.I.: No. This hasn’t happened because the statistics show that up until 2004 the consumption of “fresh” milk had been going down for ten years. From the moment that the sale of unprocessed milk started, this market is growing once more, attracted by the better product.
The machines that we have imported from Switzerland that are still in use, have become outlawed in Italy.
It’s happened that someone asked that they become metric machines: that means that they should be installed with a measuring system that is checked and sealed. Since milk has different density, the measuring system should be adjusted every two o three days, impossible with the seals.

ADP: What can be done in order to solve the problem?
G.I.: We just need to see what is done in Switzerland. The producer that installs the machine must sell a litre of milk, just like for the packaged milk where there is a sample control.
In Switzerland they have abolished the obligation of installation of the flowmeter, having placed on the side of the distributor an appropriate instrument to let the client verify if what he bought is indeed a litre of milk.

ADP: I do not know if a normative or ministerial provision is necessary. I will check that.
I represent a political force that tries, in Parliament, to face both the large and small issues: I have understood the problem, I will take charge of it and we will give to a parliamentarian, Pedica, to the responsibility to follow the situation.