There are 140 (136.351) stables and businesses that have closed since 2007, also due to unfair competition from lower quality products imported from abroad that are passed off as Made in Italy. The alarm was sounded by an analysis by Coldiretti, to which the mobilization "The Christmas battle: choose Italy" is linked, which brought about 1.500 breeders and farmers to the Brenner pass border crossing.
The blitz of farmers, who are braving temperatures well below zero, is placed precisely in this context of protection of Italian products: at the moment - as stated by the president of Coldiretti Trentino Alto Adige Danilo Merz - farmers are stopping the trucks from Austria.
“We are not – says Merz to illustrate the position of the association representing Italian agriculture – against the arrival of goods from abroad but the exchange must be correct and above all we ask for correctness in the origin of the products. If the milk arrives, for example, from Poland, when it arrives in Italy it cannot be considered as Italian milk. People need to know where what they eat or drink comes from. Over the next few hours we will decide whether to continue even beyond tomorrow's day ".
A situation that has contributed to producing the alarming data underlined by Coldiretti: in the last year alone 32.500 stables and farms have disappeared and lost 36 thousand employed in the countryside. This is a problem which has serious repercussions both on the quality of food, which becomes more at risk, and on the protection of the territory, abandoned to neglect.
"We are selling off a heritage of our country on which to build a sustainable and lasting economic recovery that is good for the economy, the environment and health", says the president of Coldiretti Roberto Moncalvo in denouncing that "the invasion of foreign raw materials pushes first to the sale to foreigners of our most prestigious brands and then to the relocation of production activities”.
The import of food products is experiencing a real boom, which marks a +22% since the beginning of the crisis. The arrivals of pork grew by 16%, while the imports of cereals, ready to become pasta and rice passed off as Italians, actually registered a real boom (+45 percent), with a +24% for wheat and +49% for rice.year for the afternoon shift – the president of Trentino Alto Adige of Coldiretti, Danilo Merz, who is currently at the Brenner Pass, one kilometer from the Austrian border, told AGI – we are currently stopping the trucks, especially those with cold rooms and those with tanks.
