Italy seeks to reassure on mozzarella

Italy told the European Commission yesterday it had not exported any mozzarella cheese contaminated with cancer-causing dioxin, but it faced questions from consumers at home.

Seeking to avert a major food scare, Italian officials played down health risks for the public after checks found higher than permitted levels of dioxin at nearly one in five producers of mozzarella made from buffalo milk.

All 83 dairy farms supplying the affected mozzarella makers have been sealed off while tests are carried out to determine where the contaminated milk came from.

"There is no dioxin scare in Campania," Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro said, eating bite-sized pieces of cheese for the cameras and blaming the scare on a "media frenzy".

"The checks have revealed a limited number of cases, 83 out of 1,900 (dairy farms), and the produce has been seized, so there is no health risk," he told reporters.

However, a consumer group advised Italians not to eat the cheese until the final results of the tests and the names of the producers concerned are made public. A leading group of producers said sales were down 30 per cent in the first two months of the year, with a revenue loss of €30 million.