Prosciutto di Parma PDO, new PDO control plan approved

Parma, 17 December 2019 - The Central Inspectorate for the Protection of Quality and Fraud Repression of agri-food products of the Mipaaf (ICQRF) approved today with a Ministerial Decree the new Control Plan which will be applied to the Parma Ham supply chain.
The contents of the Plan will enter into force on 1 January 2020 and CSQA Certificazioni will officially begin to carry out its control and certification task under the supervision of Mipaaf.

It is a result eagerly awaited by our producers, as it will allow us to further strengthen the Parma Ham protection system, to guarantee greater transparency for the consumer and to offer a tastier and safer product. The new plan will in fact have the dual objective of intensifying controls along the entire production chain with particular attention to farms and slaughterhouses and to improve traceability by making it more punctual and objective, starting from genetics and pig feed up to the finished product. CSQA now has the task of dealing with the certification and control system of our DOP and of guiding Parma Ham towards a sustainable future for the entire supply chain.
Vittorio Capanna, President of the Consortium

Among the most relevant innovations of the new control plan, it is worth mentioning the introduction of modern monitoring tools and the use of a new IT system that collects, aggregates and organizes the data recorded by farms, slaughterhouses, ham factories and slicing laboratories for identification and traceability from the raw material to the finished product. But not only. Substantial implementations are also foreseen in the management and reporting of feed, in the methods of transport, in the strengthening of checks on the weight of the pigs and in the identification of the farms of origin, in the control procedures in the ham factories both from a physical and organoleptic point of view.
Added to all this is the new Ministerial Decree on genetic types which defines a specific procedure for the identification of genetic types meeting the production criteria for heavy pigs in line with what has already been included in the proposed amendments to the Parma Ham production specification recently approved by the Consortium Assembly. The new procedures provide for the creation of a positive list of genetic types admitted to the protected circuit and a database of genetic material. For each boar admitted to the circuit, a sample of biological material will therefore be available, ie the DNA sequence for carrying out paternity checks: a real traceability tool in the breeding phase.

The strategic plan to relaunch the sector announced by the Parma Ham Consortium and its producers a few months ago and which has already seen important changes is therefore continuing at full capacity.

In recent months we have worked tenaciously to keep our promises and today we are ready to write a new chapter in our history which inevitably aims to improve the quality of Parma Ham. The Board of Directors of the Consortium has chosen CSQA Certificazioni as the new control and certification body, a leading company founded on the culture of product certification, which has developed the new control plan just approved by the Ministry, to whom we sincerely thank them for their collaboration in defining this crucial control tool. However, the approval process of the new Regulations by the Authorities is still underway with which we aim to strengthen the characterization of the product and its distinctiveness compared to competitors.
Stefano Fanti, director of the Consortium

The new Regulations include substantial changes that concern all aspects of production, from farms to ham factories, from the characteristics of the raw material to the finished product: pig genetics and feeding, processing method, reduction in salt content, weight and curing of the ham, extension of the minimum curing period, analytical parameters for assessing quality, methods of sale, pre-sliced product, etc.

In recent months CSQA has made available the best professionals to support the Consortium for the protection of Parma Ham DOP to develop a control plan in line with the expectations of the Authorities and the supply chain. Thus begins a new path to put into practice, through our consolidated experience, a punctual verification system to guarantee operators and consumers: a great commitment that confirms the leadership that our body has assumed in the sector of regulated certification in the agri-food sector.
Pietro Bonato, CEO and General Manager of CSQA Certificazioni