Italian police confiscated some 70,000 balls of mozzarella in Turin after consumers noticed the milky-white cheese quickly developed a bluish tint when the package was opened, authorities said on Saturday.
Italian Agriculture Minister Giancarlo Galan ordered ministry laboratories to investigate what he called a “disturbing” development.
State TV said a woman in Turin called police after noticing that the mozzarella, made in Germany for an Italian company, turned blue after contact with air, and that several merchants in Turin had received similar complaints. Later in the day another consumer, in Trento, a city 200km to the east in northern Italy, made a similar discovery, authorities said.
Samples were sent to laboratories that normally deal with anti-doping testing in sport to see if they could detect any foreign substances.
Results were expected in a few days.
Italian Health Minister Ferruccio Fazio alerted German authorities and the European Commission to the apparently tainted mozzarella, the health ministry said.
No cases of illness were immediately reported.
The mysterious blue mozzarella was the latest embarrassment for a food that is a point of pride for Italians and a staple in pizzas, panini and even the signature “caprese” salad in the red-white-and-green colors of the national flag — ripe tomatoes, creamy rich cheese and fragrant basil leaves.
Most prized of all the mozzarella is the kind made from buffalo milk, but earlier this year, Italian agriculture authorities said some of the buffalo mozzarella, which comes from an area south of Rome, had fallen below standard after traces of cow’s milk were found in it.
Two years earlier, tests at hundreds of Italian mozzarella production plants found high levels of dioxin in some samples of buffalo milk. That scare led some countries to suspend imports.
Buffalo mozzarella enjoys Europe’s Protected Designation of Origin label, meaning the real thing has to be made following strict criteria, including using only buffalo milk.
After blue mozzarella surfaced, the Italian agriculture lobby Coldiretti lamented that many consumers don’t know that half the mozzarella sold in Italy is made from foreign-produced milk. It is pushing for legislation that would oblige producers to label the origin of all ingredients on the label.
Currently, only cartons of fresh milk must indicate where the contents come from. Makers of yogurt, powdered milk and cheeses can use imported milk without mentioning it on the label.
Authorities didn’t immediately make public the name of the German company making the suspect mozzarella or the Italian label on it.
The health ministry said areas in Italy where the blue mozzarella might be put on sale were put on alert in case the product shows up in stores.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS