ANSA is reporting that starting January 1st, “all the tomato puree in Italian supermarkets will have to carry labels showing where the fruit was grown.”
All because Chinese canned tomatoes have been posing as Italian ones.
Given the food scares from Chinese Products the US has suffered, it might be a good thing that these products get tested before they become pizza topping. The odd thing is that most Chinese tomato products come into the port of Naples in Campana, where Italy’s top tomatoes are grown, influenced by the regions’s heat and the volcanic soils near Vesuvius.
The Chinese product comes into port in 200 kilo drums, “800,000 of the drums were exported to Italy, containing more than one billion kg of fresh tomatoes.”
One billion kilos of tomatoes! One billion of anything is big—unless it’s dollars budgeted for wars that have been, um, shall we say won? In any case, those get used up extraordinarily quickly. Maybe because they’ve been allowed to shrink like puckered sun-dried tomatoes.
Anyway, here’s ANSA’s punch line:
“Chinese authorities have admitted about 20% of its domestic food market does not meet satisfactory hygiene standards.”
All the better to send it overseas then, eh?
Ref: Italy ups fight against China tomatoes