Two of Italy’s most famous cheeses, Parmesan and Grana Padano, are being produced with milk from emaciated, sometimes lame cows kept permanently indoors, an animal welfare group said. Compassion in World Farming released a film it said it had obtained from nine farms in Italy’s Po valley exposing the “shocking” conditions endured by exhausted cows wallowing in their own excrement. The charity is using the footage to launch #notonmypasta, a drive aimed at pushing producers of the two cheeses to introduce welfare guidelines for their milk suppliers, who manage an estimated 5,00,000 dairy cattle for a business with annual sales of five billion euros.
“What our investigators exposes the misery of life in a factory farm,” said Emma Slawinski, CIWF’s director of campaigns. “There were extremely underweight, overworked animals being treated like milk machines. “Parmesan and Grana Padano cheeses are marketed as ‘high quality’ when in fact the reality for the cows couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s time to put these animals back on the land where they belong."
