Mozzarella Meltdown: Cheese Deemed Unsafe

March 28, 2008 — -- Every morning Pina Del Vecchio opens her small cheese factory and shop on the outskirts of Caserta, a city in Campania, in the south of Italy. But business is slow these days, and even if she wanted to, she "couldn't sell a kilo!" she screamed during a phone interview with ABC News.

Like many other cheese producers in the region, Del Vecchio is a victim of the mozzarella scare, which started when higher-than-permitted levels of cancer-causing dioxin were found in buffalo milk and mozzarellas.

The news, published in the national newspaper La Repubblica, prompted the Japanese and North Korean governments to block all imports of the cheese from Italy while thousands of kilos of mozzarella remained stuck at customs in Tokyo. Only today, after days of checks, has the blockade been lifted.

In an effort to ease the panic, the Italian health ministry has increased safety checks. The ministry's research found that 25 out of 130 tested cheese factories had traces of dioxin that an official statement classified as "moderately higher than the limit allowed by the European Union regulations."

Consequently, 83 dairy farms that ship buffalo milk to the concerned cheese factories have been sealed off and are undergoing more safety tests, and prosecutors in Naples have placed 109 people under investigation in connection with the inquiry, on suspicion of fraud and food poisoning.

After initially accusing Italy of not taking adequate measures to stop contaminated mozzarellas from hitting the shelves of European markets, the European Union has been satisfied with the action that Italian officials have taken to fulfill the European requests to deal with the case.

The cause of the contamination is still a matter of discussion inside Italy.

It is not yet clear what, if any, role Campania's garbage crisis has had in the mozzarella contamination. Health officials believe the waste management crisis that exploded in the area around Naples a few months ago, inundating cities and villages with uncollected rubbish only a few months ago, might account for the higher level of dioxin.