Cheese Festival Held In Italy As Part Of A 'Save A Cheese' Campaign

Global grassroots organization Slow Food has launched a campaign titled "Save a Cheese," with the goal of creating awareness of the "distinctive and original Italian cheese," Gazetta del Sud reports. Concerned about the diminishing amount of small cheese producers, who are being shadowed by larger companies, Slow Food hopes to encourage consumers to buy local cheese and other produce.

The campaign's main event was a big festival, held this past weekend, Sept. 20 to 23, in Bra, Italy. The festival celebrated artisanal cheese from around the world, and was "set to be an important moment, for the movement, for food biodiversity, and for endangered dairy products," according to Slow Food's home page.

From Friday through Sunday, the city, located in the Piemonte region of Italy, hosted the "Save a Cheese" festival, providing cheese  and wine tastings that aimed to improve the population's understanding of cheese and its role in Italian culture and cooking.

The celebration of cheese in Bra clearly was popular among visitors. According to Gazetta del Sud, "as many as 10,000 hotel rooms" were booked in the area for the event.

Visitors had the chance to taste as many as 150 types of cheese, including numerous samples from Britain such as varieties of Cheddar, Stilton cheese, and raw milk cheese from Ireland. Several cheese workshops on cheese production and dairy farming were also offered, as well as wine tastings of more than 800 wines.