Thousands of wheels of Parmesan cheese ripen at a facility near Modena, in northern Italy, where it will be determined if they're worthy of carrying the name of Parmigiano Reggiano. A consortium founded in 1934 guarantees the standard and production of Parmesan and fends off imposters.
"This one is convex," he said of the second. "There's an air bubble inside. It doesn't pass the test." Alberto Pecorari of Italy's Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium points out the fire mark on wheels of cheese that pass the quality test to become Parmesan. Producers say identifying markers are insufficient in the struggle to counter what data shows is a $2.5 billion Cdn annual business of low-quality ripoffs.
Plastic casing with braille-like lettering gets wrapped around the Parmesan to identify it as Parmigiano Reggiano. A tiny microchip in the QR plate made of protein is now being tested on thousands of wheels of cheese as a way to prevent imposters. While many are small, family operations, workers at the larger production facilities like Quattro Madonne include recent immigrants from Africa and India. About a dozen people work in production at the company near Modena.