Cheese 2009 - A Thousand Ways With Milk

by Alessio Sciurpa

Grana, Fontina, Emmentaler, Raw-Milk Butter, are some of the “guest” of Cheese – Milk in All its Shapes and Forms is back for its seventh edition, to be held September 18-21, 2009 in Bra (Piedmont) and organized by Slow Food and the City of Bra (one of the four founders of the Slow Cities movement and member of AICA – Int. Ass. for Environmental Communication).

With the 150 thousand visitors of the previous edition, Cheese, as well as having helped consumers’ perception of the world of cheese, turning the spotlight onto the diversity of artisanal production, is also a environmental communication’s tank, highlighting the entire production chain and in charge of nutrition education, biodiversity and land conservation.

Some examples are Cheese Educates: through direct contact with producers and
their products, visitors to the event can learn how to recognize cheeses, evaluate their merits and defects, understand their production techniques, and discover their special characteristics and qualities.

The Master of Food: five hours courses each, divided into two lessons - will be dedicated to everyday cheese. The classes will explore some of the world’s most popular and copied cheeses, comparing industrial and artisanal production. The Master of Food will explain how to read labels, understand the traditions of different areas and differentiate between cheeses commonly found in the supermarket. During the lessons, an analysis of Grana, goat’s cheeses, Fontina, Emmenthal, Provolone and feta and their corresponding territories (the Po and the Loire rivers, the Swiss and Italian Alps, the islands of Crete and Sicily) will seek to define how to make a choice that protects the environment and cultural traditions, while satisfying the palate and the wallet; The Master of ecological horticulture: premiered in Cheese 2009, ecological horticulture uses minimal resources of energy, water, etc.. entrusted to the action of nature itself, in order to maintain the ecological balance; Cross-Border Cheeses: One of the new features this year is the space dedicated to products and producers from the Italian-French transalpine area. It is crucial to maintain agricultural production, seeking to support “chains of excellence", starting from the places of origin, which can also be developed from a tourism perspective. It is equally important that the agriculture sector participates in regional management, given its fundamental importance in protecting the environment, with farming practices like terracing slopes, forest cleaning and cutting and summer pasturing limiting the effects of geological instability and the risks of forest fires.

Also Friday, September 18th at 18.30 at the literary café, the association Slow Food - Italia takes stock on its new project of alliance between the Presidium of the peninsula and Italian cooks interested in giving space to the products protected by the Slow Food menu (at least three) in particular those of their region.

Bruna Sibille, Mayor of Bra: «An event on milk and cheese, two important segments of the rich European food basket of European food resources, can only aim to become a lower environmental impact event. This can be done through various elements, increasing educational profile and the production and disposal of waste. Element which, in a survey where you can taste food, it is not secondary. Cheese is inserted in the vein of the initiatives promoted by Slow Food for the defense of agro biodiversity. In this context, the event hosts the Presidium of milk around the world, as are many spaces to promote the concepts of good, just and clean which are the basis of Slow movement. The municipal administration for Cheese then wanted to try to make an additional element, which we have renamed the “presidium of the waste”. We use some volunteers near the ecological islands scattered along the event, to try to guide people towards a proper waste separation, with the aim of increasing the quality of the fractions of paper, glass, plastics and biodegradable waste. For the latter, we have studied a specific project, that requires the use of biodegradable and compostable tableware (cellulose pulp, Mater-Bi and PLA) by all the exhibitors and the public establishments affected by the event».