Claudia Romeo: Parmesan cheese comes from a specific
region of Italy called Emilia Romagna.
It is also a region that was hit particularly hard
by the coronavirus.
As of April 15, 12% of Italy's confirmed cases
were in Emilia Romagna.
This put the Parmesan cheese industry
right at the center of the current crisis.
The whole country went into lockdown on March 10,
with only essential jobs allowed to carry on,
including Parmesan production.
I spoke to Nicola Bertinelli,
the president of the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium
and also the owner of a dairy,
to understand how the coronavirus crisis is affecting
the making of Italy's most iconic cheese.
According to Nicola, dairies are not fighting against
a shortage of milk or other ingredients.
Their biggest issue is the virus itself.
Claudia: To avoid a milk surplus
and being forced to sell it,
the 335 Parmesan dairies
have started to work together, share vats,
and accept another dairy's milk if its personnel is sick.
Some retired dairymen have been called back to work,
and cheese production has been extended to the evenings too.
Claudia: Nicola's dairy hasn't had
to resort to any of these measures yet.
But three dairies in the region
have had to send their milk to other dairies,
and one dairy has been forced to do
what Nicola describes as the absolute last resort
and sell their milk to a milk company.
The crisis has also caused other changes.
According to Nicola, Parmesan cheese makers are taking
measures to implement social distancing,
washing hands as much as possible,
and keeping access limited.
But that might not always be possible.
As you can see from this footage from my 2018 visit,
some steps of cheese making require dairymen
to be in close contact with each other,
like when 50-kilo blocks of curd like this one
are transferred into molds.
So how are they managing that
while keeping the environment safe?
Claudia: Another instance where social distancing
might be hard to implement
is when it comes to inspect the cheese
before it's ready to be sold as Parmigiano-Reggiano.
This happens after 12 months and is typically done
by a third-party master grader
who works for the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium.
Claudia: No matter which step of production,
cheese making is a job that requires
touching the cheese with bare hands,
an evergreen dilemma that perhaps now
has taken a whole new meaning.
Claudia: While this may be the biggest health crisis
Parmesan dairies have ever faced,
this is not the first time
they have faced difficult times.
In 2012, a magnitude 6 earthquake struck the region,
and warehouses full of Parmesan wheels
crashed to the ground, damaging a million wheels,
which at the time accounted for 30% of production.
That triggered a wave of solidarity
among the Parmesan dairies.
Claudia: How are Italians responding to this new crisis?
According to Nicola, with people confined to their homes,
doing more cooking and looking for comfort
in the foods they love,
the demand for Parmesan has never been so high.