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EU considering ban on Italian buffalo cheese

A worker prepares buffalo mozzarella at a farm at Marcianise in the province of Caserta in the Campania region of Italy. PHOTO: EPA

The specter of a new food scare loomed over Europe on Thursday as Italy faced a possible EU ban on imports of mozzarella cheese because of high levels of dioxins in the milk used to make it.

The European Commission warned Italy it could follow Japan and South Korea's lead in imposing an import ban on mozzarella cheese made from buffalo milk from Campania.

After a 6pm deadline for Rome to provide more complete information expired, the EU's executive arm called for urgent action and warned of unspecified steps against Italy's poorest region.

"The commission believes that the measures put in place are not sufficient to ensure that no contaminated product enters the market," a statement said.

This was, it said, because "no recall of product potentially contaminated has been carried out and the surveillance programme on the farms of the Campania region is still too limited."

Brussels called on Italian authorities "to take further urgent measures."

"If it considers this further action as inadequate, the commission will consider proposing safeguard measures for dairy products originating from the region of Campania," the statement said.

Italy produces 33,000 tonnes of mozzarella per year, some 80 percent of it in Campania, where a quarter of a million buffalo are farmed to produce milk for the product.

Italian authorities said last week that high levels of dioxin, which increases the risk of cancer, were found in 66 buffalo herds around the city of Naples.

In a statement late on Thursday, the Italian foreign ministry said "no products with irregularities had been exported."

It added that Italian diplomatic missions had been instructed to reassure their host nations about the issue.

Most health experts quoted by the Italian media have said that the raised levels do not constitute a danger to health, but domestic sales have already fallen by 30 percent to 35 percent, according to the body that oversees the product.

A commission spokeswoman has said the possible measures could run from a recall of concerned products from the EU market to "a complete ban" on imports to other EU countries.

Earlier, after sending "new information" about the extent of the contaminated cheese, Italian Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro told a news conference in Rome that "there is no health problem."

De Castro said the situation was under control, downplaying it as "a matter of a few limited cases" and gulping down mozzarella for the cameras.

"If you ate the mozzarella containing a level of dioxin that is slightly higher than the tolerated threshold you would have to eat 7 kilos" to have health problems, he said.
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