"We will protect our businesses, our workers, and our manufacturing excellence by every means at our disposal." The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium said in a separate statement that some of its exports to the US had been wrongly subjected to extra customs charges. "The Foreign Ministry has requested guarantees on the correct application of the EU-US agreement on tariffs because a duty exceeding 15% was applied at customs on some batches of Parmigiano Reggiano", consortium president Nicola Bertinelli said. The US Embassy press office in Rome did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Italy has raised the issue with the US Embassy and the European Commission's Directorate-General for Trade in Brussels, as well as alerting the Italian Embassy in Washington, the foreign ministry added.