Big Cheese Gets a Bailout

Bailouts are the rage the world over. America has the Big 3 automakers, Italy has Big Cheese:

Italy's most shoplifted product is rescued by a government bail-out, Nick Pisa reports from Rome.

WHILE the world's major economies are struggling to bail out their failing banks and car industries, Italy has revealed a different priority: parmesan.

Silvio Berlusconi's Government is to buy 100,000 of the country's beloved parmigiano reggiano cheeses from producers at a cost to the state of 50 million euros. The hard cheese, made around the northern city of Parma, has been a staple product found in most Italian households — and, as confirmation of the country's obsession with food, is Italy's most shoplifted product.

However, high production prices because of the rising cost of animal feed and milk have increased the cost of making the cheese so that manufacturers are losing money on each parmigiano they produce.

Demand for the product from increasingly cash-strapped families has also fallen.

"It's a tragic situation," said Marco Iemmi, who has made parmesan for 30 years in the town of Salsomaggiore Terme. "I'll have to close up shop unless things improve."

But if Big Parmesan gets a bailout, Big Mozzarella wants their share too:

Producers of Italy's other celebrated cheese — buffalo mozzarella — are looking on enviously after suffering an 18 per cent drop in sales this year.

"We've asked for help too," said Vincenzo Oliviero, the head of Italy's mozzarella producers' association, which has yet to receive an injection of state aid.

There's still hope for Big Cheddar in Wisconsin.