Less fruit and vegetables, more food approved in the homeland of the Mediterranean diet: this is the risk that our country runs, the reason for the alarm raised by Filiera Italia on the occasion of the recent Mediterranean Diet Day in the Campagna Amica markets. A paradox: while the rest of the world praises our diet as a healthy and sustainable model, in Italy a part of the population risks moving away from it under the marketing pressure of multinationals interested in selling more and more of their approved food. We ask Luigi Scordamaglia, CEO of Filiera Italia, to comment on a phenomenon that could cause serious damage to our economy but also to the health of citizens.
Scordamaglia, these days you are celebrating the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. How relevant is this narrative still?
«Never like today, I would say. The Mediterranean diet does not represent just a dietary model but a complex of social, environmental and economic values that reflects history, traditions and also the future of the communities that populate the Mediterranean area and their territories. For this reason it is essential to continue to tell it as we are doing also as a vector of justice and social responsibility, of fair distribution of added value, of positive territorial impacts. In short, the founding values of Filiera Italia.”
It is to your credit that you were the first to manage to bring together excellent Italian agricultural production with the main brands of the food industry, marking a clear boundary. Despite this, the term Mediterranean diet is increasingly inflated and often used for marketing purposes for products that have very little Mediterranean flavor.
«It is our greatest concern. When years ago, with a certain foresight, we had the intuition with Coldiretti to bring together the best of agricultural production with the big brands of Italian transformation, we had a precise objective: to benefit the growth of our sector, and therefore of the country , ensuring a fair distribution of the added value generated, but at the same time also benefiting the health of the consumer.”
Not an easy combination these days.
«But we did it. Thanks to natural products characterized by high safety and quality standards, the result of minimal transformation processes that are rooted in centuries-old traditions and in the quality of the starting product, rather than based on artificial ingredients that standardize and cancel distinctiveness. Hence all our main battles which have led to the launch of regulatory instruments such as supply chain contracts, the fight against unfair commercial practices and many voluntary agreements which are leading to an increase in the country’s self-sufficiency and food sovereignty”.
A statement that smacks of protectionism…
“In no way. We are for open markets but with fair rules. What worries us most are the opportunistic uses of the word Mediterranean when talking about food.”
This explains why you are against the standardization proposed by global food multinationals and therefore against alliances such as those recently made by Confagricoltura, the producers’ association led by Massimiliano Giansanti.
«You have to have the courage to make choices. We cannot say that we represent at the same time large global multinationals that have their strength in approved products, with identical flavor and taste in all parts of the world, and companies that small or large represent Italian distinctiveness and typicality. It is not difficult to understand the interests that the former manage to move to the total disadvantage of the latter.”
Do you have any particular examples in mind?
«I am thinking of associations such as Union Food which now have among their members companies that produce supplements, global food multinationals such as Nestlè, Unilever, Mondelez, pharmaceutical companies such as Bayer (that of glyphosate used for North American wheat also in the drying phase , ed.) and next to them companies producing a typical product such as pasta. It is beyond my reach, and not only mine, to be able to understand how such divergent interests can be represented in a single container.”
Union Food is the industrial organization that together with Confagricoltura launched Mediterranea, presented to some ministers in recent days. What in particular don’t you like about that project?
«I really struggle to understand how marrying homogenizing models of global multinationals brings value to farmers. In this way Confagricoltura places itself in the tow of these multinational potentates, making them the fig leaf. They say they want to promote the Mediterranean diet but then those multinationals support the Nutri-Score, invest in laboratory-produced foods and sometimes do not respect the rules on unfair commercial practices as demonstrated by the sanctions applied to Lactalis. And these are facts.”
Be more explicit.
«I simply say that when in Brussels we attacked Commissioner Timmermans, together with organizations from other countries, explaining that the green transition could not be done against farmers, some of these multinationals met with the commissioner’s cabinet to push him to move forward on his ideological line by not adhering to the requests of a vital category for Europe. It’s really difficult to imagine how alliances can be made with multinational companies that actually consider agricultural producers like the sharecroppers of the past incapable of self-determining their future.”
The Union’s path is dotted with contradictions and senseless strategies. And the policy of the Commission that has governed us in recent years is no exception, on the contrary.
«Unfortunately this is the case, just think that the agricultural organization you mentioned is part of a reality based in Brussels, the European Food Forum, which welcomes not only many of these global multinationals, but even the European food association cellular basis made in the laboratory. Can anyone really think that those who produce synthetic foods such as meat, milk, cheese and now also fruit and vegetables obtained in the laboratory can form an alliance with an agricultural organisation? We should abandon the hypocrisy of making declarations against synthetic food in Italy and then sitting at the same table in Brussels. For us, consistency is an indispensable value.”
Beyond the degenerations we see before our eyes, isn’t it a bit illusory to imagine a future made only of fresh and unprocessed foods?
«All diets require balance, doctors tell us. Indeed, this is the banal defense of those who think they can hide the damage of ultra-processed foods containing dozens of chemical ingredients. But it is one thing to subject natural products such as milk or meat to simple transformation processes that have existed for millennia, such as drying and salting to produce products of exceptional quality, such as our cheeses and cured meats; another is a product that in the end is composed more of synthetic and chemical ingredients than anything else.”
There is therefore also a problem of credibility.
“Safe. Anyone who plays to confuse this thing is absolutely not credible. The food industry has always played an irreplaceable role in Italy with great national champions who are the true instrument for valorising agricultural production. It is only these that we look at and want to represent. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be anyone’s fig leaf.”
However, Filiera Italia also includes within its scope complicated presences such as McDonald’s and Carrefour, supporter of the Nutri-Score.
«We have two clear and transparent evaluation criteria: the first is the concrete and measurable added value created for the Italian agricultural production and supply chain. The second is respect for a charter of values, which we will also open to contributions from consumer associations and which includes, among other things, a no without ifs or buts to the Nutri-Score. As for Mcdonald’s, its multinational model with similar recipes and product standards all over the world has differentiated itself in Italy thanks to the agreements with Coldiretti and Filiera Italia, reaching a level where 90% of the products sold in its restaurants they are Italian, with positive repercussions also on local economies.”
How did you solve it with Carrefour?
«We have obtained precise commitments from them not to apply the Nutri-Score in our country and we are negotiating other commitments at EU level. We will be consistent and intransigent with everyone on this.”
You have launched a signature collection to impose mandatory origin on food. What are you essentially asking for?
«Transparency on what we eat is a right that must be guaranteed to all European citizens. This is why we are collecting one million signatures to introduce mandatory origin labeling on all foods and cancel the current customs code rule on final processing.”
Scordamaglia, in summary what is the main objective of yours at the moment
battle?
«We want to defend the true Made in Italy, supporting the entire supply chain, from production to industry up to consumers who must always be able to choose in a conscious and informed way».
