An award-winning prosciutto producer has appealed for help after an earthquake on Sunday devastated Norcia, an Apennine town famous for its cured meats.
“I don’t have anything left, everything is destroyed,” said Valentina Fausti, whose top ham – known in Italian as prosciutto crudo – sells for €150 (£135) a kilo.
The losses facing prosciutto makers like Fausti and her company, Maiale brado di Norcia, represent yet another blow to the area’s cultural heritage, where thousands of residents left homeless by Sunday’s 6.6-magnitude quake not only face the loss of the centuries-old basilica of San Benedetto, but must cope with significant challenges rebuilding an industry that lies at the heart of the town’s identity.
For Fausti the first blow came on 24 August, when an earthquake that levelled the town of Amatrice, killing about 300 people, also destroyed her home and pig barn. The second blow came on Sunday, when she lost the building where the group’s prosciutto was cured and a shop where it was sold.
Now, facing about €2m in damages, Fausti is trying to sell 200 legs of prosciutto as quickly as possible.
While her company sells prosciutto crudo, it also has a product it sells for €25 a kilo. Each prosciutto crudo leg – depending on its weight – costs roughly €300.
Fausti is also trying to care for the 400 pigs that are at risk of being attacked by wolves now the barn has been destroyed. “We’ve lost the fencing for the pigs and I don’t have water for the animals,” she said. “We make the highest quality prosciutto in the world and no one is helping.”
Italy’s agriculture ministry has said it would help producers rebuild animal pens. Fausti said she had yet to receive assistance.
While Norcia produces only a fraction of Italy’s prosciutto, the plight facing Fausti and others is reminiscent of the crisis that beset parmigiano makers in 2012, after a 6-magnitude quake north of Bologna killed seven people and sent 300,000 wheels of cheese crashing to the floor, costing the industry an estimated €80m.
Massimo Bottura, whose restaurant in Modena, Osteria Francescana, was named the best in the world this year, helped rescue the industry, launching a broad appeal for chefs to buy parmigiano and serve it in a “Parmigiano Reggiano Night” that was celebrated across Italy, as well as in Japan, the US and France. The effort helped to sell 360,000 wheels of cheese.
