Raw materials: quality and pricing

摘要

Sheep and goat breeding in Europe is most common around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Greece, Spain, France and Italy. Over recent years the tendency has been that of a slight reduction in the number of animals bred, while at the same time there has been a general increase in the volume of milk produced. The milk of sheep and goats is mainly reserved for cheesemaking and therefore a quality evaluation of the milk used as the raw material is of fundamental importance. If, on the one hand,the achievement of a certain level of quality is of interest to the cheesemaking industry, which has to deal with the ever-increasing demands of the consumer, it is also of interest to the milk producers, who can increase their earnings by pursuing highquality. The quality of the milk to be reserved for cheesemaking depends essentially on its physical and chemical composition and on hygienic and sanitary factors (bacterial count, somatic cell count, etc.). The price of sheep and goat milk is generallyhigher than that of cow milk, even though in certain areas of production it is not specifically exploited, being blended with cow milk for the production of mixed cheeses. Differentiated pricing in relation to quality is becoming ever more widespread also for sheep and goat milk. This is mainly based on the construction of a grid on which various parameters are taken into consideration in order to establish bonuses and penalties which are then applied to the base price of the milk. The text will present statistics relative to field of sheep and goats (principal breeds, quantity of milk produced, quantity and types of cheese produced, etc.). Furthermore, methods of checking the quality of the milk, trends in the main parameters of quality over recent years and systems of pricing by quality will be outlined. Finally, by way of example, some grid models for the pricing of milk by quality will be shown.