Michèle Mesmain of Slow Food International presented the website, which will be available in five languages and includes sections on health risks and benefits, local campaigns, ‘Raw Milk Heroes’, legislation, education and animal welfare. Italian researcher Roberto Rubino talked about the importance of maintaining the biodiversity of milk, which naturally contains many dozens of strains of positive bacteria.

One of the countries with the strictest legislation against raw milk is Australia, which produces 12 percent of the world’s cheese. Exporting, producing and selling raw-milk cheeses, with a very few exceptions, is illegal. ‘We’ve been fighting for change since 1996 and the government hasn’t really listened at all,’ said Australian cheesemonger Will Studd. ‘It just announced last week that they’re recommending no major change to the current situation.’ He said the sale of raw milk would become a criminal offense. ‘Our example might be followed in the USA, perhaps in Europe. It is worth
fighting for the right to a choice.’

The situation for raw-milk cheesemakers in the United States is indeed precarious, as cheesemaker Mateo Kehler explained. ‘The Food and Drug Administration is proposing doing a risk assessment which will lead to changes in the next 12 to 18 months.’ Currently cheeses can be made from raw milk if they are aged for at least 60 days, but that could change. However,he  was generally optimistic. ‘There¹s a revolution happening outside the control of the government. People are voting with their forks and making choices about how they want to feed themselves and their families.’ He
concluded: ‘If it’s possible to sell sushi and oysters, it should be possible to sell safe raw milk.’

Elisabeth Ryan coordinates a campaign in Ireland against proposed changes to the law that would make it illegal to sell liquid raw milk. She said the Irish authorities wanted an international image of Ireland as a safe food country. ‘This ‘sterilisation’ of food trumps quality,’ she said. ‘We need to find a way to convince the government that we can minimise the risks relating to raw milk. It’s estimated that 100,000 people in Ireland consume raw milk and we’ve only had two cases of illness from raw milk in the last 10 years.’

Ryan works for Ireland’s Sheridans Cheesemongers, and one of its founders, Seamus Sheridan, also gave his perspective. ‘Here in the Langhe you produce beautiful wine. I don’t think it should be pasteurised. In Ireland we
produce the most beautiful milk in the world and I believe that farmers should have the right to sell it safely however they want,’ he said. ‘We must fight for the biodiversity of our farmers, foods and agriculture and for pleasure and taste.’

The Netherlands’ aged artisanal gouda presidium coordinator Marjolein Kooistra described a different set of concerns. The sale of raw milk was not a big issue in her country, she said, but the main problem raw-milk cheesemakers faced was cheeses being made with heat-treated milk and being falsely sold as raw milk.

Piero Sardo, president of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, brought the discussion to a close with some final words. He blamed industrial dairy producers for imposing pasteurisation and lobbying against raw milk. ‘We had 10,000 years of raw-milk cheese before Pasteur, and we’re still here,’ he said. ‘Europe hasn’t been stricken by  epidemics. We’re the only  ones who can stand up against this. They can’t force us to eat sterile food, but nobody is going to defend us. We have to do it ourselves, by choosing, protesting, organising events, campaigning and refusing to eat plastic cheese.’

News Limited reporters Nick Gardner and Renee Viellaris report on 24 April that the bank’s analysis, conducted for Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph, showed that of the $242 billion in Australian retail sales last year, $94.3 billion, or 38.9 per cent, was taken by one of the corporate giants’ ever-increasing portfolio of retail brands.

‘Almost 40 cents in every dollar we spend at the shops is now taken by a Woolworths’ or Wesfarmers’ owned retail entity,’ bank retail analyst Andrew McLennan said.

‘Both groups have been expanding their market share through a spate of acquisitions, which has given them an enormous concentration in our retail market.’

The news will infuriate critics of the Woolworths-Coles duopoly and strengthen calls for the government to intervene with harder-hitting anti-competitive laws.

The companies have been free to extend their interests in groceries, fuel, liquor, gambling, office supplies, electronics, general merchandise, insurance and hardware, sparking concerns that consumers will ultimately pay more.

However, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said there was ‘nothing inherently anti-competitive about Coles (Wesfarmers) or Woolworths entering a new industry’.

Last Thursday the ACCC announced that it would not oppose Woolworths Limited’s proposed acquisition of The Cellarmasters’ Group, an online and direct wines sales business.

But federal independent senator Nick Xenophon, who has railed against Coles and Woolworths over the ‘milk wars’ and the pair’s growing dominance of the poker machine market, said they had an ‘obscene level’ of market dominance.

‘These companies fake the appearance of competition by using all these different retail brands, but ultimately the dollars go back to the same two companies,’ he said.

‘The current set-up … gives the two supermarket giants unacceptable power over suppliers, because if you don’t supply to Coles and Woolies on the terms the supermarkets want, suppliers can be effectively locked out of the market.

‘I believe we need divestiture powers similar to those in the United States, where businesses have to break up their companies if they become so large they begin to be anti-competitive.’

Both companies have denied their dominance was bad for customers, saying consumers were getting great deals.

An unnamed spokesman for Coles said the price of more than 5000 lines in stores had been reduced in the past 12 months.

‘And we have absorbed over $50 million worth of supplier price increases, rather than passing them on to customers,’ he said.

A spokesman for Woolworths said the ACCC had undertaken an investigation of the grocery industry and found it be workably competitive.

The federal government told The Sunday Telegraph that legislation which ‘clarifies’ powers for the ACCC would be reintroduced by the end of the year. The laws lapsed last year in the Senate.

The laws will give the ACCC and courts a wider scope to consider competitive effects resulting from an acquisition, including impacts on producers, wholesalers, distributors and retailers.

Current laws are restricted to looking at the primary market in which the acquisition would occur.

Meetings will be held in Perth on Saturday 21 May and in Pemberton, Western Australia, on Sunday 22 May, and in Melbourne, Victoria, on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 May.

Paolo, a graduate of the University of Turin, began working for Slow Food in 1998, co-ordinating its biodiversity defence programmes known as the Ark of Taste and Presidia. He has also led planning for Terra Madre, Slow Food’s biennial world meeting of food communities, which last was held in 2010.

These meetings present an important opportunity to discuss the major challenges confronting food. Elena Aniere says that the meeting will enable local members to learn more about Slow Food principles and projects. Paolo and Elena also want to hear about convivia activities and the ways in which communications and food networks might be developed.

Information points

• Perth: Pauline Tresise by email or T 08 9381 4519
• Pemberton: Sophie Zalokar by email or T 08 9776 1580
• Melbourne: Alison Peake by email or T 03 5427 4545

The volunteer-writers of the Guide say that if eaters bow to the dictates of Australia’s two major food grocery chains – which care only about price – ‘we’ll end up bypassing smaller, local growers in favour of larger, more industrial producers and imports’.

In the comprehensive 40-page Guide, from which the $10 sale proceeds support Slow Food Sydney projects, Peter and John write that larger growers often can produce food more cheaply ‘but smaller growers can produce a more diverse range of crops and get them to market faster’.

‘Local growers also look after the land around our cities and provide the attractive rural landscapes we so enjoy. Losing this connection to our food supply is dangerous to our health and our culture. Strong societies have always been built on agriculture. We cannot afford to lose ours to the tenuous promise of a more efficient ‘somewhere else’.’

The Guide includes lists of local, seasonally-produced food month by month and detailed comments about the availability of particular varieties.

‘The zone which we consider local is the Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain farming regions to the south-west and north-west of the city,’ write Peter and John. ‘When we can’t (find produce that’s local), then we specify New South Wales or, in some extreme cases, such as rare turkeys bred seasonally, we point the reader to a useful source, wherever it may be.’

The Guide also contains very useful information about Sydney seafood and the breeding and raising of animals for meat, comprising beef, lamb, goat, pork and poultry, including game.

The Guide is available for purchase at selected Sydney farmers’ markets, such as Eveleigh and Taylor Square, and from retailers, including Granny Smith Natural Food Market in Turramurra. Peter and John hope that chefs and independent grocers and butchers concerned about food diversity and seasonality will also stock the Guide.

Buying the Guide
Retail price: $10.00 plus postage

Contact:

• Peter Kenyon at Granny Smith Natural Food Market by email or telephone 02 9988 3787, or call at 6 Princes Road, Turramurra NSW 2074

Interested re-sellers should also contact Peter at Granny Smith to discuss wholesale purchases.