They've given up, for now. The French and Israeli bleats will not resound in the sheepfolds of Gennargentu and Campidano, Anglona and Barigadu. Assault repelled, until the next. The industrialists, after hours of exhausting confrontation, are forced to an unexpected stop. The modification of the disciplinary for the production of "Pecorino Romano Dop" does not have to be done. All postponed to next January 12th. Christmas truce, but the war is brooding under the snow of the Barbagia. The postponement is not, in fact, a definitive renunciation of those "Trojan sheep" that the general staff of the dairy industrialists of Sardinia would like to introduce into the production system of the island.
The trap
A real "trap" in the words of Gianuario Falchi, one of the leaders of the "milk revolt" of 2019. The postponement is a success of the No compared to those "catastrophic" changes, but it is, at the same time, the confirms that that lockpick of the French and Israeli sheep in Sardinian land is a real sword of Damocles on the most important sector of the island. The tug-of-war between industrialists and shepherds is not explained differently for that apparent and modest 10% of milk produced by foreign sheep that we would like to legitimize with the modification of the production specification of Pecorino Romano PDO. Both the shepherds and the industrialists know, each from their own point of view, how crucial and at the same time risky it is to open a passage in the production system of protected designation of origin cheese.
They do not trust
The reasons for that ten percent, 20/30 million liters of milk, according to the shepherds, are the viaticum to open a milk pipeline with intensive farms, located a little in Sardinia and, perhaps, a little not. In reality the shepherds do not trust those cisterns that go up and down from the Continent towards the Island. They perceive, and in some cases expressly denounce it, the risk that milk from farms a thousand miles from Sardinia crosses the Tyrrhenian Sea, eventually supplying some island dairies. At that point that 10% of "genetically" authorized milk, if it passed the modification, would end up being, in fact, a real Trojan Horse (sheep), able to open a real "foreign" and "intensive" passage ”In the production of Pecorino Romano. Who will control that ten percent? Who will have the authority to monitor the production of 300 million liters of milk produced in over 10,000 farms scattered in every corner of the island? Nobody. The production chain has always been uncontrollable and any attempt to guarantee traceability has failed, both on an organizational and institutional level. Therefore, shepherds fear the opening of a "door" which risks reversing the production process, from extensive to intensive, from pasture to stable. The risk is substantial and structural.
