Life cycle assessment of organic Parmesan Cheese considering the whole dairy supply chain

Agriculture and food manufacturing have a considerable effect on the environment emissions: holdings and farms play an important role about greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption. This study aims at evaluating the environmental impact of one of the most important Italian DOP product: organic Parmesan Cheese. Environmental performances of the whole dairy supply chain have been assessed according to the life cycle assessment approach (LCA). In this analysis Parmesan Cheese is made from an organic dairy farm in Emilia Romagna, which uses the milk from three different organic livestock productions. Organic agriculture is different from conventional; the major difference is represented by the avoidance of the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides made in chemical industry process. Organic agriculture uses organic fertilizers to encourage the natural fertility of the soil respecting the environment and the agro-system. In this case, life cycle approach is used to assess the carbon footprint and the water footprint of organic Parmesan Cheese considering the milk and cheese production. The object at this level is investigating the environmental impact considering the situation before some improvement changes. The functional unit is represented by 1 kg of organic Parmesan Cheese; inventory data refer to the situation in year 2017 and system boundaries consider the inputs related to the cattle and dairy farm until the ripening (included). The carbon footprint is investigated using IPCC 2013 Global Warming Potential (GWP) 100a method, developed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and reported in kg of CO2eq. Otherwise, water footprint allows to measure the water consumption and in this work it is assessed using AWARE method (Available Water REmaining).

Microbial quality of industrial and retail market grated parmesan cheese in the State of São Paulo, Brazil

ABSTRACT: With the objective to evaluate the hygienic and sanitary conditions of grated parmesan cheese acquired from the retail business, total 120 cheese samples were acquired: 60 of which were obtained from four different brands of cheese that were grated in factories, and the other 60 samples were obtained from another four brands of cheese that are normally acquired by retailers (supermarkets) in blocks and grated at the moment of sale. The population of heterotrophic mesophilic microorganisms ranged from 1.2×10³ to 1.1×107 colony-forming units (CFU)·g-1. All samples analyzed contained Staphylococcus spp. with populations varying from 1.2×10³ to 8.7×106CFU·g-1, from which 60.0% were classified as coagulase-positive Staphylococcus and 52.5% of the samples possessed populations above the permissible limit set by legislation. Staphylococcus aureus was detected in 57.5% of the samples. Population of molds and yeasts varied from <10 to 1.8×106CFU·g-1. Salmonella spp. was not isolated in this research. A difference was observed between the parmesan cheese grated in factories and that grated in supermarkets, where the former presented better microbiological quality than the latter. Thus, procedures must be proposed to minimize the presence of pathogenic agents reported in grated parmesan cheeses evaluated in the present study because of the public health risk associated with food bacterial contamination.

Cheese perception in the North American market

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to detect market segments where consumers have a different knowledge of domestic and imported Parmesan cheese in USA and Canada. The results may be helpful in understanding to what extend North America consumers appreciate Parmesan cheese and brands, Parmesan consumption and price while recognizing market segments according to consumer awareness, involvement and covariate effects. Design/methodology/approach – A class of mixture models, known as combination uniform binomial (CUB), is applied to survey data collected in USA and Canada. A questionnaire, filled out by 540 restaurant customers, collects opinions about consumption, purchase features and price. The CUB model estimates the two latent variables, known as feeling and uncertainty, explaining the respondent’s behavior as awareness and involvement variability while the CUB clustering procedure detects market segments. Findings – CUB results show that the Parmesan is a well-known cheese but also that a small share of consumers look for the place of origin. The model detects market segments where consumers express better awareness on taste, price and origin while the knowledge of imported Parmesan brands is lacking. Most of consumers, not paying attention to the origin, would hardly switch to the imported Parmesan because of higher price or because they are already satisfied of the domestic cheese. Research limitations/implications – The results suffer some restrictions in the sample representativeness. A further analysis, where the survey is done at retail and advances in CUB models, may improve the market segmentation procedure allowing a better generalization of results. Practical implications – The survey results highlights the appreciation and consumption of Parmesan cheese, especially for its taste, as well as a low perception of Italian brands. Consequently, trade companies should focussed their communication strategy on activities encouraging North American consumers to taste Italian Parmesan brands (e.g. tasting sessions, price promotions) instead of costly and less effective advertising campaigns. Social implications – Parmesan brand misunderstandings are often associated with market information asymmetry. The paper results show a market segmentation where purchases are mainly driven by Parmesan taste regardless of domestic or imported brands. Likely, the consumption of domestic Parmesan is well consolidated and it is not a consequence of brand information asymmetry. Originality/value – The CUB model is an innovative and flexible no parametric approach for evaluating consumer behavior and for segmenting the market while dealing with complex problems of food knowledge.