Fake Italian food is costing farmers billions of euros each year, producers warned on Tuesday.
Agriculture is racking up annual losses of at least 60 billion euros through the sale of foreign products masquerading as Italian, agricultural association CIA said.
This is a 20% increase on the figure reported last year.
Speaking after a meeting with Italian Farm Minister Paolo De Castro, CIA President Giuseppe Politi said the sale of such goods was on the rise globally, and called for help from the European Union.
''In our opinion, comprehensive European legislation is needed in order to protect products from various countries,'' said Politi.
''We need rules that take into account consumer demands in terms of transparency and greater information''.
Many Italian products are already protected by existing EU regulations that lay down strict rules on the item's origin and the manufacturing process. No ham made outside the Parma area, for example, can bear the label Parma ham.
But these requirements do not apply to items manufactured and sold outside the EU, nor to the many products sold inside the bloc that are not on the EU register, for example pasta sauces.
Politi outlined a series of demands for action at an EU level, starting with the European Commission stepping up efforts at the World Trade Organization for a global register of protected names.
In addition to this ''fundamental'' step, he said farmers needed financial assistance in order to bring legal action against the manufacturers of fake goods.
He also called for tougher, consistent penalties for those who violate existing regulations.
Other requests included an EU task force to fight food fraud and the introduction of a clear labelling system to ensure consumers are aware of a product's origin.
Nearly 40% of all phoney Italian products are sold inside the EU, according to CIA.
In France, it said, there are twice as many fake Italian goods as there are genuine ones, rising to three times as many in Germany and the Netherlands.
But purchases of sham Italian items in China far outstrip those anywhere else, accounting for 35% of the global total.
Italy has been stepping up its efforts against food pirates in recent years.
Parma's Parmigiano Reggiano consortium has spearheaded the fight, and a series of legal battles have been fought over the popular cheese with mixed results.
In 2005, the consortium stopped an American cheesemaker from using the Parmigiano tag on its grated cheese - the fourth time in ten years that a US company had been forced to remove the label from its product.
The following year, cloned American parmesan was denied permission to export worldwide.
But the consortium took a blow in June, when the European Court of Justice's advocate-general Jan Mazak recommended that no action be taken against Germany for allowing the name Parmesan to be used for a German cheese.
Mazak argued that it had not been proven that consumers were being fooled into buying Parmesan when they really wanted Parmigiano.
Although the ECJ has not yet given its final ruling it follows the advocate-general's opinion in most cases.
The case was brought against Germany by the European Commission after the ECJ issued a non-binding opinion in 2002 that the word ''parmesan'' had become synonymous with Parmigiano Reggiano and so could therefore only be used to market Italian cheese from that area.
