Italy's top cheeses 'products of cruelty'

Two of Italy's most famous cheeses, Parmesan and Grana Padano, are being produced with milk from emaciated, sometimes lame cows kept permanently indoors, an animal welfare group said Saturday. Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) released film it said it had recently obtained from nine farms in Italy's Po valley exposing the "shocking" conditions endured by exhausted cows wallowing in their own excrement.
The charity is using the footage to launch notonmypasta, a campaign aimed at pushing producers of the two cheeses to introduce welfare guidelines for their milk suppliers, who manage an estimated 500,000 dairy cattle for a business with annual sales of some five billion euros. "What our investigators exposes the misery of life in a factory farm," said Emma Slawinski, CIWF's Director of Campaigns. "There were extremely underweight, overworked animals being treated like milk machines, suffering just so we can add a topping to our pasta.