By Silvia Aloisi
ROME (Reuters) - Italy has sealed off 83 dairy farms afterfinding nearly one in five buffalo mozzarella producers weremaking cheese with above permitted levels of cancer-causingdioxin, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
Seeking to avert a major health scare over one of Italy'sbest known culinary products after Japan and South Koreablocked imports, the ministry said special checks were beingmade to guarantee the safety of the cheese.
Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said international alarmwas "totally exaggerated and unjustified".
A health ministry statement said checks had revealed levelsof dioxin "moderately higher than the limit allowed by EuropeanUnion regulations" in the mozzarella and milk at 25 out of 130cheese factories -- a higher incidence than previouslyreported.
It said that as a result all the 83 dairy farms supplyingthe producers affected had been sealed off while tests wereunder way to establish where the contaminated milk came from.
"The measures adopted are intended to guarantee the safetyof current production which continues to be subject toadditional and extraordinary checks," said the statement,issued after a meeting involving several ministries.
TOXIC CHEMICAL
The sealed-off farms are in the southern Campania regionaround Naples where officials believe a garbage crisis earlierthis year is linked to the higher dioxin levels.
With dumps in the area full, locals burned piles of rubbishin the streets and in open fields. Health officials sayindustrial waste was also set ablaze, spreading fumes that insome cases contained dioxin, a toxic chemical.
"The presence of dioxin is not due to the garbage itselfbut to the fact that substances containing dioxin have beenburned and the fallout from the smoke brought some dioxin tothe ground," Health Ministry undersecretary Gianpaolo Pattasaid.
"The great majority of mozzarella farms are untouched bythis or by other diseases and they are strictly controlled," hetold Reuters.
Police in Campania were also investigating whether feedgiven to buffalo herds, which produce the best milk formozzarella, was tainted, possibly by gangsters involved inillegal waste disposal.
Some mozzarella shops in Naples on Wednesday were puttingup notices saying their cheese was safe.
Japan and South Korea suspended imports at the weekendwhile the European Union had asked Italy for safety assurancesafter reports that some of the cheese was made withcontaminated milk.
A Japanese health ministry official said Japan wanted thenames of the producers affected by the contamination.
"If we could be provided with the names of these firms, wecould again allow cheese from the other producers to enter thecountry," he said.
Buffalo mozzarella, which costs at least twice as much asmozzarella made with cows' milk, is best known abroad for itsuse on pizza, although purists eat it on its own or with adrizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.
Rolando Manfredini, in charge of food safety at Italy'sbiggest farmers group Coldiretti, said mozzarella sales at homeand abroad may fall 60 percent in the next couple of weeks.
The sector employs 20,000 people in Italy and makes 33,000tonnes of mozzarella a year, 16 percent of which is soldabroad.
(Additional reporting by Miho Yoshikawa in Tokyo, CristianoCorvino in Rome and Svetlana Kovalyova in Milan; Editing byKeith Weir)
