Italy is to step up the fight against Italian sounding food fakes, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told the AGM of food federation Federalimentare in a videolink with the Cibus fair on Tuesday. The government's plan for the extraordinary promotion of Italian products this year "envisages action to defend brands and quality and origin certifications , and to fight Italian sounding products" like Parmesan, he said.

Di Maio said that "damaging practices, like Italian sounding (products), have reached worrying proportions, especially in the agri-food sector". The Italian foreign ministry, he said, was engaged in "an intense action of combating the counterfeiting of Italian goods on a global scale".