The organic yogurt made with hay milk, free from flavourings and thickeners, capturing all the biodiversity of South Tyrol's mountain farms, has reached the market. Born from the commitment of Alce Nero, which joined forces with Mila.
Italy's first organic yogurt made with hay milk — from cows fed predominantly on grass at mountain farms in South Tyrol — is now available. The product is made under the Alce Nero brand, a company celebrating 40 years of experience in organics in 2018, and was born from a collaboration with Mila, a historic South Tyrolean company specialising in the production of milk and dairy products. It took four years to bring to shelves a food that preserves the natural characteristics of hay milk because it is produced in accordance with the principles of organic farming, with respect for the animals, the farmers and the mountain habitat.
The hay milk yogurt was presented in Milan on 6 February at Cascina Cuccagna, one of the oldest agricultural farmsteads in the city. Those present at the event included Massimo Monti, chief executive of Alce Nero, Joachim Reinalter and Reinhard Schuster, respectively president and member-relations manager of Mila. The medical and health world was also strongly represented, through contributions from Renata Alleva, nutritionist and researcher specialising in nutritional sciences and a member of the Association of Doctors for the Environment (Isde Italia), and from veterinary surgeon Alessandro Fantini, president of the Italian Society of Buiatrics.
With this product, Alce Nero makes its entry into the dairy sector, thereby broadening its range of fresh products. This choice is linked to the desire to adapt to changes in the food market without, however, altering the company's objectives, namely the promotion of rural labour and rural knowledge and the safeguarding of the environment. "The organic world is changing — big brands are coming in. Our members, who are first and foremost farmers, have no interest in giving in to the allure of multinationals," said Monti. "For this reason, we need to evolve."
"The new hay milk yogurt is therefore the result of a process of sharing with the farmers who are, above all, smallholders, if one considers the precious stewardship activity and safeguarding of the mountain territory and the alpine pastures that they carry out," added the chief executive of Alce Nero.
These farmers operate at an average altitude of 1,200 metres and are champions of "a farming practice passed down through generations as a guarantee of the extraordinary Alpine landscape", Reinhalter explains. The tradition of milk production goes hand in hand with the requirements of modern certifications: first and foremost, the European Union's recognition of hay milk as a "traditional speciality guaranteed". In addition, organic certification involves "very strict production rules", explains the president of Mila. "The cow must have space to move around or must be kept on pasture. All its feed must be organic. No use of antibiotics is permitted, especially for preventive purposes."
Environmental aspects are also fundamental to completing the production circle. The impact of farming is reduced because it no longer entails the massive use of cereals and soya — the feed on which cattle are normally raised in intensive farming — and therefore of water, land and fossil fuels. In this way, the vicious circle linking agriculture and climate change is broken. And it is above all the mountain environment that benefits: "with hay milk, the animal produces less milk but also less slurry. So it is more sustainable because it respects the natural cycle of the land more. The hay is produced, eaten, and the slurry is used to fertilise the land again — but not excessively", Reinhalter specifies.
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Feeding cows grass and hay — what their stomachs digest most naturally — instead of cereals and soya means reversing the trend of industrial production, which, in addition to harming the environment, also harms the animals. "To support their income, farmers need to produce as much milk as possible", this is the starting point according to Fantini, a veterinarian specialising in cattle farming. "To produce more, the rumen (the first of the fore-stomachs of ruminants, ed.) has to be pushed harder, like a stove into which you pile more and more wood", he describes the effect of feeding animals cereals and soya. "Like all systems that are pushed too hard, it can cause harm to the animals."
As evidence of the relationship between animal welfare and product quality, the flavour of hay milk varies according to what the cows eat and, through digestion, convert into the nutrients in the milk. By feeding on fresh grass in the warmer seasons and hay in the colder ones, and only to a small extent (no more than 15 per cent) on strictly organic feed, the biodiversity of meadows cultivated without synthetic chemicals — containing dozens of different herb species — is passed on to the animals. "This aspect of biodiversity has a knock-on effect on the biodiversity of our gut", explains Alleva. "Our microbiota is all the more varied and efficient the more we vary our food without contaminants. Yogurt fits in very well with this, because it is a fermented product and we know that these are very beneficial for our gut."
These are the themes at the heart of the three-year AppenBio project, in which Alce Nero plays a leading role and which aims to increase the profitability of rural businesses and support territorial biodiversity through studies and trials in the Bolognese Apennines. Among these is also a scientific assessment of the impact of hay milk on health, to be carried out by physician and epidemiologist Franco Berrino and researchers from the University of Perugia.
The decision by Alce Nero and Mila to reverse the course of industrial farming is a bold one and, according to the president of the latter, the project is "destined to give new motivation and impetus to the small farmers of our mountains". For consumers, the result is a genuine product that combines the best of tradition and innovation while respecting the organoleptic properties of the yogurt, the animals that make it possible for us to have milk, and the people committed to bringing these foods to our tables.
The Alce Nero organic yogurt made from Italian hay milk can be found at Bennet, Auchan, Carrefour, Coop, Pam and Tosano stores.