Italian Tracing System for Water Buffalo Milk and Processed Milk Products

Giovanna Cappelli; Gabriele Di Vuolo; Oreste Gerini; Rosario Noschese; Francesca Bufano; Roberta Capacchione; Stefano Rosini; Antonio Limone; Esterina De Carlo

doi:10.3390/ani11061737

Italian Tracing System for Water Buffalo Milk and Processed Milk Products

Animals (Basel). 2021 Jun 11;11(6):1737. doi: 10.3390/ani11061737.

Authors

Giovanna Cappelli¹, Gabriele Di Vuolo¹, Oreste Gerini², Rosario Noschese¹, Francesca Bufano¹, Roberta Capacchione¹, Stefano Rosini³, Antonio Limone¹, Esterina De Carlo¹

Affiliations

¹ National Reference Laboratory for Hygiene and Technology of Breeding and Buffalo Production, Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Mezzogiorno, 84131 Salerno, Italy.
² Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, 00187 Roma, Italy.
³ Agribusiness Quality Department, 00187 Roma, Italy.

Abstract

This document describes the development of a tracing system for the buffalo supply chain, namely an online computer system in which farmers, dairies, and brokers must maintain records of the production of milk through to the production of derivatives. The system is jointly used throughout the Italian national territory by the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Mezzogiorno (IZSM) and the Sistema Informativo Agricolo Nazionale Italiano (SIAN), after being made mandatory and regulated with the publication of the Ministerial Decree of 9 September 2014. Farmers are obligated to communicate their daily production of bulk milk, the number of animals milked, the number of the delivery note of the sale, and the name of the purchaser; within the first week of the month, they must communicate the milk production of each animal milked. Dairies are required to communicate the milk and the processed product (mozzarella, yogurt, etc.) purchased on a daily basis. The intermediaries are required to communicate the daily milk purchased, both fresh and frozen, the semi-finished product, and the sale of the same. The tracing system linked to the project authorized by the Ministry of Health, called "Development, validation and verification of the applicability of an IT system to be used for the management of traceability in the buffalo industry", provides operators with the monitoring of production and sales in real time through alerts and access logs. Currently, there are 1531 registered farmers, 601 non-PDO dairies, 102 PDO dairies, 68 non-PDO intermediaries, and 17 PDO intermediaries in Italy. The system provides support for the recovery of the buffalo sector; from the analysis of the data extrapolated from the tracing system of the buffalo supply chain for the years 2016 to 2019, this paper highlights that the application of the Ministerial Decree No. 9406 of 9 September 2014 and the tracing of the supply chain have increased the price of buffalo milk at barns from EUR 1.37/kg to EUR 1.55/kg from 2016 to 2019.

Keywords: dairies; farmers; traceability milk; water buffalo.