• Thirty years of research, method, and community at the service of real food.

    ANFOSC is the National Association of Cheeses Under the Sky: since 1995, we have worked to ensure that food quality is a measurable fact, not a marketing promise.

OUR IDENTITY

An association that has chosen science as the language of quality.

ANFOSC was founded in 🟨 1995 from the intuition of Roberto Rubino and a group of producers, researchers, and technicians convinced that the quality of Italian food needed objective tools, not just stories.

Since then, the association has brought together those who believe that the difference between an authentic product and one merely declared as such must be able to be measured: in polyphenols, in the aromatic profile, and in nutraceutical properties.

Our name — ANFOSC – Associazione Formaggi Sotto il Cielo (National Association of Cheeses Under the Sky) — tells where we come from: from open-air grazing, from animals that feed on wild herbs, and from producers who resist intensive logic. However, our work goes beyond milk: it extends to oil, wine, meat, and cereals, wherever quality stems from respect for biodiversity and the territory.

HISTORY

Thirty years of research, in 5 stages.

  • 1995

     

    Foundation

    ANFOSC was founded in [location] from the intuition of Roberto Rubino and a group of producers and researchers. The goal: to provide a voice and a method for cheeses produced with grazing animals, in an era when the dairy industry was pushing toward the intensive model.

  • The Noble Method

    Roberto Rubino, a researcher at CRA (now CREA), formalized the Noble Method: a scientific protocol to measure food quality through objective parameters (polyphenols, aromatic profile, nutraceutical properties). ANFOSC became the reference network for its application.

     

    2000

  • 2010

     

    The Quality Classes

    The ANFOSC Quality Classes were defined: a categorization system that distinguishes foods based on analytical data, not marketing. The network of members expanded beyond the dairy sector to include oil, wine, meat, and vegetables.

  • Trinacria Nobile

    ANFOSC participated as an Innovation Broker in the Trinacria Nobile project: a Temporary Association of Purpose (ATS) funded with 500,000 euros that brought together 17 Sicilian companies to apply the Noble Method to milk, meat, and cereals, in collaboration with the research center of Prof. Chiofalo at the University of Messina.

     

    2020

  • 2026

     

    Today

    ANFOSC is a national network of 🟨 50+ companies across 🟨 15 Italian regions, with a presence in 🟨 6 nations both within and outside Europe. Tools such as the Gusto da Me app, the Formaggi Sotto il Cielo brand, and the publications of founder Rubino present quality in a new way: through numbers.

FOUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

What we have always believed in. What we ask of those who join the ANFOSC network.

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MEASURABILITY

Quality is not an opinion: it is data. Every ANFOSC claim is based on verifiable scientific parameters — polyphenols, aromatic dynamism, and nutraceutical properties.

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BIODIVERSITY

Open pasture, native breeds, local varieties, natural microbiology: we defend production systems that produce diversity, not those that erase it.

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TRANSPARENCY

Our analytical data is public, methodologies are shared, and protocols are replicable. No opaque brands: only shared knowledge.

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COMMUNITY

Producers, researchers, restaurateurs, trainers, and conscious consumers: ANFOSC is, above all, the relationship that brings them into dialogue.

The founder

ROBERTO RUBINO

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT OF ANFOSC

A researcher, agronomist, and communicator, Roberto Rubino has dedicated his career to a single question: how is food quality measured?

After years at the CRA (now CREA) as a researcher in animal science and pastoral systems, he founded ANFOSC in 1995 to provide an associative structure for his research. Over the years, he developed the Noble Method, a protocol that links the analytical characteristics of food (polyphenols, aromatic profiles) to the production systems that generate them — proving, with data in hand, why pasture-raised cheese is not equivalent to stall-raised cheese.

He is the author of numerous popular and scientific publications, including “Rudimenti di Degustazione” (Rudiments of Tasting) and “Il Cibo Ti Parla” (Food Speaks to You) (Infiniti Mondi Editore), books that have introduced thousands of readers to a new way of reading food: not with the stomach, but with the palate and the mind.

His “Pillole di Rubino” (Rubino’s Pills) — published periodically on the ANFOSC blog — have become a reference point for those seeking rigorous and never trivial reflections on the future of agriculture, taste, and food communication.

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

ANFOSC is governed by a Board of Directors elected by the Shareholders’ Assembly. Below are the current members of the board.

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Roberto Rubino

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Adriano Gallevi

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Ruggero Amato

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Michele Pizza

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Scientific partners

THE RESEARCH NETWORK

 

Join the Network

Thirty years of method. A constantly growing community. A place for you too.

Producers, taste professionals, researchers, enthusiasts: ANFOSC is a network of people who believe in measurable quality. Find out how to join.

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