Naples Garbage: First Commercial Dividends

Fouling your own doorstep!

Don’t foul your own doorstep, nor someone else’s! Surely the first thing Italian mothers should now teach their children.

Japan and South Korea blocked imports of mozzarella cheese, one of Italy’s best known culinary products, after larger than “permitted” levels of the lethal dioxin compound, a carcinogen, was found in the mozzarella and milk at 25 out of 130 cheese factories in the southern Campania region near Naples.

The mozzarella di bufala campana known best for flavor and quality (now dioxin) Mozzarella is a generic term for Italian fresh cheeses that are made by spinning and then cutting. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Italy’s Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema said the alarm was “totally exaggerated and unjustified”.

Italian health officials finally sealed off 83 dairy farms were the cancer-causing dioxin contaminations were found.

“The sealed-off farms are in the southern Campania region around Naples where officials believe a garbage crisis earlier this year is linked to the higher dioxin levels. With dumps in the area full, locals burned piles of rubbish in the streets and in open fields. Health officials say industrial waste was also set ablaze, spreading fumes that in some cases contained dioxin, a toxic chemical.”

Mountains of rubbish lies uncollected in Naple. Photo Credit: AFP (image may be subject to copyright) See: FEWW Fair Use Notice

Experts believe that mozzarella sales in Italy and abroad may fall by more than 60 percent in the near future.

Stats:

• A quarter of a million Italian buffalo produce 33,000 tons of mozzarella each year.
• About 16 percent of mozzarella produced is exported.
• The sector employs 20,000 people at home.

“Buffalo mozzarella, which costs at least twice as much as mozzarella made with cows’ milk, is best known abroad for its use on pizza, although purists eat it on its own or with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.”

Italian Pizza with Buffalo Mozzarella Topping

An authentic Neapolitan Pizza Margherita. Photo: ElfQrin (Valerio Capello). This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 1.2 or later version.

Original and related reports

• Italy seals off 83 farms over mozzarella scare
• Japan suspends imports of Italian mozzarella: official
• Buffalo herds produce the best milk for mozzarella

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• Naples: The Triangle of Death
• The Swiss Solution

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