Italian farmers on Wednesday denounced the "worldwide scam" of foreign-produced cheese, ham and other foods that are sold to unsuspecting consumers as traditional Italian products.
The global market in imitations of Italian products is worth some 50 billion euros, about half the sales notched up every year by authentic foods from the land of Dante, said farmers' union Coldiretti.
"This is global deception for consumers which damages Italian producers economically and tarnishes their image," Coldiretto chief Paolo Bedoni said.
To back up their claims, farmers in Naples on Wednesday laid out a table with a range of the bogus Italian foods which had been discovered in various continents around the world.
There was mozzarella produced in Wisconsin, 'Roma style tomatoes' grown in California, Parmesan cheese made in China, Modena vinegar from Germany and Bolognese spaghetti sauce from Australia.
Bedoni said that the bulk of the imitations were in Australia and the United States, noting that only 2% of 'Italian' cheeses sold in America were actually from Italy.
In particular, some 90% of the Parmesan cheese was made from milk taken from cows in the pastures of New York state or California, he said.
Just as worrying for Italian producers is the fact that fake Italian products are arriving on supermarket shelves in emerging economies such as China, even before the real ones get there.
Italian cheese and ham makers are concerned that Asian populations are being introduced to their food products cheap and inferior copies, with the resulting risk that an imitation will be seen as the original.
"The WTO must step up the fight against food pirates who falsify the territorial identity of foods and hinder transparent trading," Bedoni said.
"We have to forge alliances with the Developing countries where there is a growing awareness of the need to protect intellectual property in foods and to battle unauthentic regional products".
To combat food pirates, Italy has been stepping up efforts to protect its food heritage, with Parma's Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium spearheading the fight.
A year ago Parmigiano scored a key legal victory, when it managed to stop an American cheesemaker from using the Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese.
