The Coredo judgement of December 2024 – condemning an Italian dairy company liable of severe injuries caused to a toddler, following an E.coli STEC contamination – marked a turning point for the Italian dairy sector. The legal proceedings not only placed the directly implicated dairy company under scrutiny, but also raised crucial questions about the entire supply chain, shining a spotlight on milk suppliers and the competent authorities responsible for scheduled inspections.

From that moment of crisis, a domino effect was triggered, accelerating the evolution of control systems to protect consumers, especially children. At the forefront of this change is the Alice Association, a national organisation representing families of E.coli STEC victims, which immediately pushed for the establishment of a technical-scientific committee to address the root of the problem.
Mediatic pressure and the need for rapid responses pushed the Ministry of Health to produce new national guidelines in July 2025. These guidelines shocked the raw milk production establishing the analysis of every raw milk curd and new labelling rules. While not legally binding, this document provided strong impetus to individual regions, encouraging them to legislate on the matter.

Shifting the focus

The real turning point in implementation came in the summer of 2025 thanks to the close collaboration between the Piedmont Region and Associazione delle Casare e dei Casari di Azienda Agricola, Italian association representing farmhouse cheesemakers. The association pursued a very specific approach: shifting the focus of microbiological analyses to the milk filter rather than the curd. This insight was embraced by the regional authorities, leading to the creation of the Piedmont Region’s guidelines in November 2025—which remain the only regional guidelines in Italy up today.

The post-legislation phase ushered in a phase of intense joint training involving the Food Business Operators (FBOs), the competent authorities, and the Breeders’ Association laboratories. The primary objective is transparency: collecting data to monitor the situation as closely as possible and promptly identify critical issues.
But to “close the loop” and have a truly complete epidemiological picture, the Association has also taken action on the health front. Collaboration with the Department of Health (prevention sector) has been requested to initiate widespread monitoring of pediatric hemorrhagic diarrhea cases within hospital facilities, thus correlating dairy production data with public health data.

The system is currently operating at full capacity: hundreds of filters and curds are processed every month. By next November, the database will be further expanded, as screening has been extended to the pre- and post-alpine pasture phases.
From a financial standpoint, the costs of the inspections are borne entirely by the farmers, with a cost ranging between €35 and €50 per single analysis (excluding additional costs in the event of a positive result). Although the minimum required frequency is two or more inspections per year, a significant phenomenon is being observed: producers, especially smaller ones, are voluntarily choosing to increase the number of analyses. This choice is driven by the desire to protect their work and, as they say, “sleep more soundly.”

This impressive flow of tests will finally allow us to make conclusions based on objective data, not perceptions. To leverage this wealth of information, the Association is collaborating with the University of Milan (UniMi) to create a form for collecting contextual data: farm type, animal species, processing techniques, and sampling environment.

A similar process has already been initiated by the Veneto Region. In their case, the goal is to identify which specific traditional production processes or technologies present a lower intrinsic risk. This research is tailored specifically for the Veneto region, historically linked to the production of semi-hard cheeses.