The project was ambitious, but today Assica can claim to have fully won the challenge: “Trust Your Taste, Choose European Quality” closes the first three years of activity with an extraordinary result, both in terms of numbers achieved and effectiveness. “The objective was to rally the pig sector to establish renewed trust among consumers in Italy and Belgium, countries involved in the campaign. We did not expect such a warm welcome, well beyond the set expectations, but this is the clearest sign of how our intuition to rethink some paradigms was not only necessary, but also urgent. We are proud of the objectives already achieved and of the involvement of our supply chain, which has got involved and actively engaged in change. From here we are ready to continue, for further development of the project which will accompany us for the next three years", says Davide Calderone , director of Assica.

The main messages of “Trust Your Taste, Choose European Quality” were the safety of production systems, nutritional values, sustainability, animal welfare and the growing attention that sector operators dedicate to these issues and, more generally, to quality. This is a summary of the results: - 16 seminars and educational courses held for the benefit of over 800 operators and companies for a total of more than 20 hours of training and as many expert teachers involved to address the key issues of sustainable development and innovation; - a video Academy (a complex e-learning path consisting of nine training videos for operators) focused on key subjects for the sector capable of reaching over 300,000 professionals (https://www.trustyourtaste.eu/per- the-operators/and-online-lacademy-di-trust-your-taste/); - approximately 20 million people reached every year, in Italy and Belgium, with dissemination and information activities, online and in traditional media; - a You Tube channel with around 500 subscribers and 12 video recipes dedicated to the valorisation of pork and cured meats also from an 'anti-waste' perspective, which have collected over 400,000 total views and around 25,000 average views (https://www.trustyourtaste.eu /category/for-consumers/video-consumers/)• over 66,000 people met during promotional activities in 183 Italian delicatessens and butchers, also an opportunity to reiterate the role of the delicatessen as a professional figure guarantor of the quality of the raw material and ally of the consumer.

The numbers from www.trustyourtaste.eu are even more extraordinary if we consider the exceptional conditions that have hit the supply chain recently, from the increase in production costs, which has particularly affected delicatessen companies, to the African swine fever emergency and its consequences on exports and the reputation of the sector. “As Assica we have responded by promoting growing sustainability of the sector, without neglecting actions capable of increasing consumer awareness, such as the commitment to combating food waste", continues Calderone . "The Trust Your Taste project has been and will continue to be - thanks also to the support of the European Union - a fundamental piece of this strategy and also an important litmus test to understand the responses of operators and consumers in real time".

Consumers who reiterate their appreciation for Italian pork and cured meats: in the period January-November 2023, according to Assica's processing of Istat data, exports of Italian cured meats grew, reaching 190,880 tonnes for a turnover of 1,976.4 million euros, recording a +7% in quantity and a +9.5% in value. In Belgium, the target country of the project (in addition to Italy), in the period January-November 2023, exports of Italian cured meats reached 9,337 tonnes, for a value of 109.8 million euros, recording a +13.1% in volume and +9.8% in value. Both in volume and value the result of the first 11 months of 2023 exceeds that of the whole of 2022.