L’AQUILA – Linked to the pastoral tradition of Abruzzo, it is said that kebabs, or rustell, were born in the 1930s from the genius of two shepherds from Voltigno so as not to waste the less noble cuts of old sheep’s meat or mutton.
In less than a hundred years, kebabs have crossed our borders, becoming famous throughout Italy and abroad. Yesterday morning, they arrived in the Region, on the table of the Third Commission ‘Agriculture, economic development and productive activities’, together with representatives of the major trade associations in the livestock sector, involved in a discussion on the proposed resolution which intends to commit the Government regional authority to undertake all the actions necessary to support the Dop certification process of the product: ‘Arrosticino d’Abruzzo Dop’.
“To date, the Region has not received any requests for PDO arrosticino – declared the vice-president of the council, Emanuele Imprudente – . I believe that we should aim to arrive at a shared solution, imagining possible paths that also contemplate, for example, an intermediate step on the PGI brand. However, any option must be rapid. The real risk is that other markets invade Abruzzo and at that point we would have lost the opportunity to protect the authenticity and tradition of a typical regional product”.
Second Confagricolturawrites Ansa, “the most serious risk is that other regions could ask for and obtain community recognition with very serious and irreparable damage to our economy, penalizing the transformation sector made up of local companies that have achieved, with their professionalism, notable levels of quality and conquered the Italian and foreign markets”.
Confagricolutra, however, believes “it is unrealistic to talk about creating a PDO supply chain both due to the lack of raw materials and the lack of qualitative and quantitative requirements, precisely because our farms have specialized in the production of milk, related processed products and lambs and only few produce the meat intended for the production of kebabs”.
For theRegional Association of Arrosticini producers “The PDO is an impossible prospect to realize which would seriously damage an economic sector that currently employs 12 thousand people. The Abruzzo arrosticino market starting from the 80s – they write on their Facebook page – was built by courageous entrepreneurs who, despite the absence of local raw materials, gave life to an economic and promotional phenomenon in Abruzzo which now someone would like to eliminate.”
Of a completely different opinion, Coldiretti Abruzzo which has been carrying out a pro Dop campaign for months.
“Currently the symbolic product of our sheep farming is based on the massive importation of foreign sheep meat, which is easier to find and process – recently declared the president of Coldiretti Abruzzo Pietropaolo Martinellisheep breeder – the result is that currently more than three out of four skewers have foreign origins.
If on the one hand the arrosticino conquers the squares and international markets, on the other the Abruzzo zootechnics must deal, every day, with the unsustainable management prices, the consequences of climate change and the physiological abandonment of the activity by the shepherds who today number less than a thousand and govern a heritage of approximately 190 thousand adult animals, a third of which are destined for the production of the renowned sheep ‘skewers’.
The recognition of the PGI, as we have highlighted several times, unlike the PDO, requires that only one of the processing phases of the finished product takes place within the specific geographical area (and therefore Abruzzo), giving the final blow to regional breeding which, instead, could start again from the arrosticino and return to being one of the leading sectors of Abruzzo’s agri-food”.
Regarding the controversy over the arrosticino – and the need to favor the PDO over the PGI – Coldiretti Abruzzo confirmed its position yesterday, reiterating that “it is an ethical battle, a battle on transparency which puts the importance of the origin of the foods that have made our agri-food tradition great”.
Together with Coldiretti, a partnership made up of Regional Breeders AssociationL’Experimental zooprophylactic institute And Spied srl, industry leader in the sector.
