The Central Inspectorate for the Protection of Quality and Repression of Fraud (ICQRF) of agri-food products of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry (Masaf) has renewed the authorization , with Ministerial Decree, for CSQA to carry out controls for Salad of Lusia PGI for the next three years.
Lusia Salad has a prestigious record: it is the only one in Europe protected by the PGI mark , obtained in 2009.
Cultivation takes place in the province of Rovigo, where 26 producers and packers operate. “The origins of horticulture in this area – underlines Emanuele Capato, vice-president of the Consortium for the Protection of Lusia PGI Salad – date back to the beginning of the twentieth century. However, we had to wait until 1933 to find the first mention of the production of Cappuccia salad in the handwritten notebooks of the producers in the area. The introduction of the Gentile variety dates back to the 1960s by some traders from Lusia, who imported it from the Veronese market that they used to frequent".
For the Consortium, protecting the authenticity of the product also involves valorising all the heritage behind the Insalata di Lusia PGI: the territory, the tradition, the culture that a certain area has been able to express over time, its naturalistic heritage, and the economy of the farmers who live in the area.
Lusia salad, the only PGI lettuce in Europe since 2009