Raw milk crackdown in Italy now!

Europe, and Italy especially, have long been the land of the free when it comes to raw milk access. Thousands of raw milk vending machines in Italy alone have been in trouble free operation for ages now. So why the crackdown now?

From Sarah Kent, in the Wall St. Journal:

“Andrea Verlicchi, an Italian Web designer, used to leave his apartment in the mornings, stroll to a nearby vending machine and fill his recyclable glass bottle with fresh, raw milk.

“The milk is great,” said Mr. Verlicchi, like drinking it “directly from the cow.”

Vending machines that dispense fresh, unpasteurized milk have proliferated in Italy and throughout much of Europe in recent years. The stainless steel mechanical fridges can be found in supermarket parking lots, town squares and on roaming milk-mobiles. According to a “milk map” website designed by Mr. Verlicchi there are currently around 1,300 machines in Italy alone.

Italy, Switzerland, ban flu vaccines

From Eva von Schaper and Phil Serafino on Bloomberg.com:

“Italy and Switzerland halted sales of Novartis AG’s (NOVN) flu vaccines after the company informed Italian authorities of a buildup of particles in the shots. Novartis said the products are safe.

Novartis didn’t provide enough information for officials to know the exact makeup of the proteins found in the Agrippal and Fluad shots, or their impact on the quality and safety of the vaccine, Italy’s Health Ministry said in a statement today. There have been no reports of illness because of the particles, officials said.

The vaccines present “quality defects that are potentially dangerous for public health,” the ministry said. Italy’s medicines agency AIFA “has established the need for further tests regarding the quality and security” of the vaccines, according to an earlier statement from the ministry.

Raw milk gelato in 1950s Italy — that is, until the health department intervened

From Stephanie Cesca in The Toronto Star:

Making Gelato in Italy from raw milk in the 1950s. Photo via Toronto Star.

“…To make sure they didn’t blow it, my mom, two of her sisters and a family friend spent last summer in Bologna, Italy, at the Carpigiani Gelato University. There, they learned why gelato-making calls for the passion of an artist and the precision of a scientist: One wrong move — like one extra teaspoon of sugar — and your masterpiece is finito.

Four days of cheese at Slow Food event

“Like everyone who traveled to get to the event in Bra, Italy, I came with an empty bag, which was stuffed with heavy blocks of cheese when I left.”

Good people, good cheese... Slow Food in Italy. Photo via The Atlantic

From Corby Kummer at The Atlantic, via 3 Wheeled Cheese blog:

“Last week, while the rest of the food world was speculating over who should replace the great Sam Sifton as he ascends inexorably to editor-ship of the New York Times, the trajectory I’ve long considered appropriate for former food critics (I’ve got my own favorite for his successor, but I’m hoping, not telling), I was on a semi-annual gig teaching writing at Slow Food’s University of Gastronomic Science’s master’s program. I also got to stay on for two days to sample the endless varieties of cheese at Slow Food’s event called, simply,Cheese, which for four days every two years turns the center of its founding city, Bra, into a day-and-night festival that brings back not just former university students but the world’s big-cheese cheeses (surely I’m the first to think of that). If you’re anywhere near Turin, Italy, today, head over! The revelry went on past midnight during the two days I got to be there. Writing and cheese, naturally, were on my mind — and in my bags coming home.

Raw milk vending machines in Europe

From Lune at the “Constant State of Flux” blog:

.

We found the material for this post on the Salt Spring News along with the following bit of commentary:

“Having grown up on a dairy farm and having operated one myself, I’ve been drinking raw milk most of my life. It’s not automatic that raw milk is a safe product.

Australian slow fooders look to Italy and its automats for raw milk inspiration

From a story in the Australian publication “Stock and Land”:

“IN AUSTRALIA, raw unpasteurised milk is regarded by regulatory authorities as a dangerous substance that can’t be permitted into the food chain.

In Italy, and across much of Europe, the authorities are cautiously allowing liquid raw milk to make a reappearance (although it has long been allowed in cheese, a use also banned in Australia).

However, in the Italian case it took a good slice of innovation to ease the return of liquid raw milk.

Take the case of the Cozoserno Cozolat, an increasingly familiar machine in urban Italy, one of which was stationed outside the Slow Food Salone del Gusto.

Another raw milk roadside attraction — “latte crudo” vending machine in Italy

The picture below, is from a raw milk vending machine in Italy, one of many European countries where raw milk is freely available:

af

Photo is from the Livorno Daily Photo Blog. Go there for more photos and comments.

When in Rome, how to get raw milk?

This account of raw milk drinking in the city of Romulus and Remus comes to Bovine readers via Kimberly Hartke’s blog and is written by  Western Dairy Farmer editor Anthony Kovats:

Photographer Annie Liebowitz's take on the saga of Romulus and Remus, legendary founders of Rome, who were said to have been nursed in the wild by a she-wolf. I guess if that story is true, it means that the greatness of the Roman Empire was founded on a diet of raw milk... raw wolf milk!

“His name is Georgio. A wild haired Roman with an infectious smile who used to be an architectural photographer for Vogue.

We had just arrived in Rome not four months ago.

And for more than a week he was our guide, our landlord and a fast friend.

The modest basement flat we rented from Georgio’s family was anything but. Tiled in ceramic and marble with décor straight from an Ikea catalogue, my family was greeted by a welcoming basket of wine, pasta and sauce, fresh bread and coffee and three beautiful lemons form Georgio’s mother-in-law’s own tree.

It was during our second day in the flat. Georgio wanted to ensure we had a good night’s rest and everything was to our liking when he cast a furtive glance around, narrowed his eyes and came closer, his voice barely a whisper.

He asked if we would be interested in a litre of raw milk — unpasteurized and fresh from a farm just a few kilometers from the ancient city.

Slow food’s slow road to change — gourmet elitists for social justice?

The two worlds of slow food on display at the Turin "Terra Madre" event. Photo on left by Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France Presse/Newscom. Photo on right by Lisa Abend.

To add to the theme we started in our last post, here’s an excerpt from a report on that Slow Food event in Turin Italy at which the visiting school children were drinking raw milk from a vending machine. But first a brief introduction:

While the Slow Food movement has long found favour among the culinary cognoscenti, Slow Food’s agenda has also inadvertently highlighted the economic disparity between those who can afford an enlightened way of eating and those who subsist on the margins of society while growing food for the rich and discerning. Lisa Abend explores this theme in her recent story for the Christian Science Monitor, dated November 24th. Here’s some of what she says:

“Turin, Italy – Somewhere between the exquisite vial of 25-year-old balsamic vinegar, fermented in cherry wood, that Modena’s Acetaia del Cristo sells for roughly $150 and the few dusty potatoes that Ann Petroni hawks on a blanket she brought with her from Burundi, lies the future of Slow Food, founded in 1989 to counteract the pernicious effects of fast food.