Italian Tracing System for Water Buffalo Milk and Processed Milk Products.

Simple Summary: As buffalo milk is important in Italy, especially in the southern regions where Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) buffalo mozzarella from Campania is produced, the need has arisen to trace the path of milk from the farm to the dairy. We aimed to verify the applicability of a buffalo tracing system throughout the national territory, following the Ministerial Decree of 9 September 2014. Use of the online system is mandatory for breeders, dairies, and intermediaries, and is required to record and communicate all milk that is produced, bought, and sold. In Italy, the number of registrations is more representative in the Campania region, which has the highest concentration of dairy buffalo herds; for the other regions, the number of farms registered in the system is less representative. The system highlights that the circuit of non-PDO products absorbs 35% of the total milk produced, while 65% of the milk is processed in PDO dairies, which allows for the control of milk production throughout the territory and facilitates the control of milk that proceeds to be frozen or that can only be used in non-PDO productions; this increases the transparency of the supply chain. The system is a computerized archive of the productions for all the operators in the sector. This document describes the development of a tracing system for the buffalo supply chain, namely an online computer system in which farmers, dairies, and brokers must maintain records of the production of milk through to the production of derivatives. The system is jointly used throughout the Italian national territory by the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale del Mezzogiorno (IZSM) and the Sistema Informativo Agricolo Nazionale Italiano (SIAN), after being made mandatory and regulated with the publication of the Ministerial Decree of 9 September 2014. Farmers are obligated to communicate their daily production of bulk milk, the number of animals milked, the number of the delivery note of the sale, and the name of the purchaser; within the first week of the month, they must communicate the milk production of each animal milked. Dairies are required to communicate the milk and the processed product (mozzarella, yogurt, etc.) purchased on a daily basis. The intermediaries are required to communicate the daily milk purchased, both fresh and frozen, the semi-finished product, and the sale of the same. The tracing system linked to the project authorized by the Ministry of Health, called "Development, validation and verification of the applicability of an IT system to be used for the management of traceability in the buffalo industry", provides operators with the monitoring of production and sales in real time through alerts and access logs. Currently, there are 1531 registered farmers, 601 non-PDO dairies, 102 PDO dairies, 68 non-PDO intermediaries, and 17 PDO intermediaries in Italy. The system provides support for the recovery of the buffalo sector; from the analysis of the data extrapolated from the tracing system of the buffalo supply chain for the years 2016 to 2019, this paper highlights that the application of the Ministerial Decree No. 9406 of 9 September 2014 and the tracing of the supply chain have increased the price of buffalo milk at barns from EUR 1.37/kg to EUR 1.55/kg from 2016 to 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]