In Europe, respect for tradition meets respect for the environment.
The Consortium's commitment to nature and people's health is contained in the Excellence and sustainability model, and is aimed at combining the value of the community and traditions with the natural elements and the environment, while fully supporting an evolving society.
The Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele acts rigorously through a set of rules and external control systems capable of ensuring the reliability and independence of all the procedures. The governance system guarantees autonomy with respect to producers and ensures that administrators operate in the general interest of the sector and of all the consortium members. The internal management tools ensure correctness in the conduct of activities and accurate and reliable control.
The awareness of protecting the product and guaranteeing a high quality standard is what unites the 31 companies that adhere to the Consortium.
Prosciutto di San Daniele PDO is a ham inextricably linked to the place where it is processed and cured, obtaining a unique and high quality product, which combines tradition and technological innovation:
• methods and crafts that pass on the tradition and preserve the quality of the product;
• continuous commitment in the search for innovative solutions that strengthen the relationship of trust with the consumer through a transparent and sustainable management of the production process.
The Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele cares about nature and is committed to preserving the territory which generates a particular and irreproducible microclimate, a fundamental component of the aging of Prosciutto di San Daniele PDO. It’s precisely the microclimate of the town of San Daniele del Friuli that gives the ham its typical flavour: the warm and brackish breezes, which rise up the Tagliamento river from the Adriatic Sea, meet the cold winds that descend from the Carnic Alps along its course, generating a constant natural ventilation to which the hams are exposed during maturing.
Protecting this precious environment therefore means protecting the elements that guarantee Prosciutto di San Daniele its organoleptic characteristics. For this reason, the Consortium pays great attention to minimizing the impacts of its production chain on the surrounding environment and protecting natural resources, working in synergy with the consortium members and guiding them towards sustainable management of the ham production processes.
In particular, the Consortium’s commitment is aimed at supporting and facilitating producers in the management of three environmental services:
The Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele makes the promotion of respect for animal welfare one of its corner-stones. In fact it collaborates with all the players in the value chain, communicating with farmers to im-prove farming practices and, at the same time, working in synergy with research bodies and associations to promote a virtuous application of the rules, with the monitoring of the results and the categorization of farms.
The Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele currently intends to promote the voluntary accredited certification of the National Quality System for Animal Welfare, SQNBA (Art. 224-bis, law 17 July 2020, n.77) in order to encourage the greatest possible adhesion to the system by the farms of Prosciutto di San Daniele supply chain. The SQNBA, a project promoted by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, in collaboration with Accredia, the Italian Accreditation Body, consists of a set of animal health and welfare requirements that are higher than those of the relevant European and national standards. The objectives of the System are: to ensure food quality, economic, social and environmental sustainability of production processes in the livestock sector; improve the welfare and health conditions of animals and reduce emissions into the environment; provide the consumer with clear and correct infor-mation on animal welfare.
Even before, since 2015 the Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele has been participating in the development of a pilot project to raise awareness among farmers and stimulate the application of good practices for improving animal welfare and reducing the consumption of antimicrobials. The Consortium has promoted meetings with breeders and trade associations (Anas National Association of Pig Breeders) and collaborated with the IZSLER Experimental Zooprophylactic Institute of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna. Subsequently, it collected voluntary adhesions from farmers to undergo an audit by the Institute, thus creating the starting point for the farms involved in the Classyfarm system.
ClassyFarm is an integrated digital system, funded by the Ministry of Health and created by IZSLER, which has the purpose of monitoring, analyzing and directing the interventions in the farm on animal wel-fare, biosecurity, animal nutrition and responsible use of drugs.
Classyfarm. The virtuous project for animals, breeders and consumers. Discover more
The Consortium operates by virtue of the value of transparency and acts to make information on the production process of Prosciutto di San Daniele available to all consumers.
The digitized traceability system confirms the authenticity of the sliced product in real time and then provides information to the consumer to guarantee the origin of the raw material at every stage of its processing.
Managing the traceability of the supply chain means guaranteeing the origin and provenance of the product at every stage of processing: from breeding, to slaughterhouses and ham factories, up to labeling with the brand of the Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele.
The independent Control Body IFCQ Certificazioni is the third party responsible for verifying and certifying the correct application of the Production Regulations by all parties in the production chain and for the DPO certification of the ham.
In June 2019 the Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele developed a digital tracking system applied to each tray of pre-sliced ham that allows consumers to have an easy and immediate tool to discover the main information about the product and the path of the various phases up to slicing. Each tray is equipped with a unique QR code, readable by smartphone, which guarantees consumers the transparency of the information relating to the production of Prosciutto di
San Daniele they are purchasing.
The Consortium of Prosciutto di San Daniele promotes principles of healthy nutrition to protect people’s health and well-being and listens to the needs of a society that is increasingly sensitive to the quality of food and healthy lifestyles. For this reason, over the last ten years, the salt content of the ham has been reduced by 30%, without compromising its organoleptic properties.
Every day all the companies that adhere to the Consortium work to offer consumers a simple, healthy and preservative-free product.
The respect for traditional production methods continues to be maintained over time and has been able to evolve in compliance with the food needs of consumers, who are increasingly attentive to the quality of products and the prevention of diseases.
The Consortium’s commitment to promote the quality characteristics of the ham and the importance of healthy nutritional principles is expressed in:
Circular economy is based on the concepts of waste reduction, reuse and the creation of new materials from existing ones. It is an approach for everyone at the centre of the transition towards greater environmental sustainability. In light of this, the Prosciutto di San Daniele Consortium has chosen to adopt a circular approach in order to maximise the value of resources used in the production processes at prosciutto facilities.
Prosciutto di San Daniele production processes mainly generate salt waste, divided into solid salt and brine. True to the principles of circularity, this salt waste is recovered by specialised companies and conferred to authorised treatment plants in Veneto, Tuscany and Piedmont, where they are transformed into useful products, like road de-icer or preservative for the tanning industry. 4,629 tons of solid salt and 3,499 tons of brine were recovered with this process in 2023.
In addition to this first recovery model, the Consortium is further structuring its commitment to sustainability by promoting the construction of an innovative salt recovery plant just outside San Daniele del Friuli, designed to optimise the solid and liquid salt waste enhancement process, with a particular innovation in brine treatment.
Works began in the first few months of 2023, with the adaptation of facilities; the plant is expected to be commissioned in 2024. The project aims to ensure continuous disposal, cost containment and reduced road transport impact, in virtue of the plant’s close proximity to the San Daniele district, where waste is currently conveyed beyond the region.
It is crucial for everyone to act responsibly and transparently in the current biodiversity crisis. Not only does the loss of biodiversity impact the Planet, there are significant economic consequences too, as 55% of global GDP depends on well-functioning ecosystems.
Prosciutto di San Daniele can only be defined as such if it is produced in a specific place, San Daniele del Friuli where the Tagliamento river flows and unique microclimatic conditions form the specific ecosystem for the production and ageing of this prosciutto. Natural, atmospheric and climatic changes risk altering this delicate balance, which would also undermine the resulting product. Therefore protecting the environment has always been a priority for the Consortium.
The Consortium has been actively defending the Tagliamento river for some time now. In 2005 it funded a specific study to oppose the construction of expansion boxes; in 2018 and 2021, it expressed its opposition to projects for the construction of dams and detention basins along the river.
The Tagliamento is Europe’s only Alpine river with a course that has been unaltered and untouched by human works. Thus it is able to maintain its natural ecosystem unaltered, thanks to its high hydromorphological quality. The Tagliamento runs 170 km from the Carnic Alps to the Adriatic Sea and hosts a rich variety of plant species, since it connects mountain and flatland habitats. The river bed is also a migratory corridor for numerous bird species and is used for nesting.
The Consortium strives to honour its responsibility for protecting the Tagliamento and the territory, being active on three fronts:
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
The European Union supports
campaigns that promote high quality
agricultural products
