Warnings flew fast and furious this past weekend about tainted and potentially deadly Italian wine, a vile witches' brew containing sugar, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid. In some cases, authorities said, only one fifth of the ingredients in the tainted "wine" would have been grapes. In all, it is believed that some 70 million liters of the adulterated wine may have been put on the market.
The outrage would not have come to light had it not been for the intrepid reporting of an Italian newspaper, L'Espresso. The Italian government, embarrassed by the fact that the poison was being manufactured and sold under its very nose, sought to shift the blame to its favorite whipping boy, the Mafia.
"Let's not have a storm in a wineglass," Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro told reporters at a hastily called news conference.
It was unclear over the weekend whether any of the tainted wine was imported into the United States. Italian wine outsells its French competitors 2-to-1 in this country, and a quarter of Brunello Di Montalcino's 6.5 million bottles annual production is sold in the United States.
Despite record high Eurodollar exchange rates pushing up the price of exports, Italy's wine sector saw its foreign sales rise 12 percent.
On Friday, the government attempted to play down fears of another health scare like the one that hit mozzarella cheese last week.
In that case, several European countries and China banned the sale of Italian buffalo mozzarella due to fears it was tainted with dioxins from illegal waste burning near Naples. Italian officials said Wednesday they had temporarily shut down production at more than 80 cattle farms after detecting higher-than-permitted levels of dioxin in 25 mozzarella-making facilities out of 130 checked.
American consumers are no strangers to product safety recalls, as everything from bacteria-ridden hamburger to cars equipped with exploding gas tanks are regularly made available in our "free market economy."
There was always the consolation of superb Italian wines, cheeses and pork products to assuage us, after all.
But the mozzarella and wine scandals of the past two weeks provide proof positive that the Italian government is as incapable of protecting its citizenry from rapacious profiteers as our own.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 8 2008 |