The Project

The T-Cheese.Med project aims to study a strategy that through new technologies intends to create a network between the public institutions involved in the agricultural sector and the scientific entities that act as control bodies to certify quality products such as the historical and traditional cheeses.

GENERAL OBJECTIVES

Promoting the new information and communication technology to reinforce the dairy sector through the creation of a network among all the involved actors.

ANALYTICAL DESCRIPTION

The Mediterranean area has been, for thousands of years, the main point of global exchange for food coming from agriculture and farming activities. We can say that it has been that the “sea of the flavors and spices”. This is one peculiar characteristic that surrounded the culture, the economy and the landscape, deeply transforming the Mediterranean countries.
The traditional dairy products, exclusively obtained with raw milk, give the chance to the consumers of tasting a “unique” product for both the aromatic aspect and for the healthy and nutritional aspects. Each piece of traditional cheese is tied to the territory of origin, from which it elicits the peculiar characteristics defined as “Biodiversity Factors”.
Many of these factors are tied to the landscape, the climate, the type of natural pasture, the breeding and to all those cultural and historical aspects characterizing a specific area. For all these reasons, the typical cheese is born and is becoming a territorial brand representing a marketing means of interaction with the global consumers not only for promoting the variety of the cheeses but also for promoting the variety of territories.
Talking about the dairy chain for the production of typical cheeses we should consider some aspects:

1. the milk producers and the cheese makers;
2. the farmers;
3. the DOP guarantee consortiums;
4. The research and quality certification consortiums.

All the subjects participating at this project have in common the isolation problem: more than 70% of the actors involved in the dairy chain belonging to the Archimed zone is established into the interland, really far from the administrative districts. This aspect is a huge handicap and threatens to produce important negative effects:

* isolation of the scientific communities comparing both to the most advanced research techniques and to the check production systems used in the European area;
* lack of information for the cheese producers about the European rules that are applied for producing typical quality cheeses;

Progressive lost of specialty cheese market share.