Two of the largest food trade associations in Italy have joined forces at the end of March to create the new Unione Italiana Food (Italian Food Union), an entity that represents 450 companies and is the biggest of the industry at European level. It's main goals are to enhance the value of the products that symbolize Italian food; to overcome the challenges of the global market and to lay out the future of Italian food around the world.

The Italian Food Union is starting out with two precise programmatic points: saying no to adopting the so-called “traffic light” nutritional labels recently proposed to Brussels by six multinationals (Mars, Mondelez International, Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Pepsi); and express doubts over the adoption of the Stellone (the Made in Italy symbol backed by Minister Carlo Calenda), which would end up discriminating against companies that invested abroad and produce “all'italiana.”