The Italian Trade Agency is cracking down on counterfeit Italian food items on sale in the UAE by urging people not to buy food without the official Italian seal of quality.
“There is a long process for food to be officially certified,” said Liborio Stellino, ambasssador of Italy to the UAE.
“It has to have the official seal to be authentic. Without it you don’t know what you are buying. When you are buying mozzarella, for example, you need to know it has the official seal of quality, without it you could just be buying gloopy cheese that is called mozzarella but is not, in fact, mozzarella.”
Stellino, who was speaking at a press conference in Dubai, said that food has to pass a stringent series of tests, for healthiness and quality, to receive the official seal of approval.
One trend that we can expect to come from the Italian sector is agri-food, this is a developing sector and Stellino remarked that: “It is a cool job in Italy right now, you are seeing a lot of people going back and creating start-up companies in this area.
“They are fighting to have the highest quality food available.”
The Italian Trade Agency will also have a presence at next week’s Speciality Food Festival which is part of Dubai International Hospitality Week (DIHW) at DWTC from 18-20 September.
There will be more than 26 elite Italian food producers taking part at the event. The importance of the Italian food trade to Dubai cannot be underestimated, said Stellino, as he pointed out there are more than 300 Italian chefs operating in the UAE today.
