I can not wait to hear comedians comment on the news from Italy about suspicious cheese.

A batch of about 70,000 mozzarella balls which turned blue upon opening has been confiscated by food authorities in Italy, officials say.

Blue cheese? Apparently the Police are called in Italy when cheese goes blue. I would wager the cheese would get a completely difference reaction in England or France. Maybe the cheese was just shipped to the wrong market.

Some interesting facts in this incident:

• 60% of Italians regularly eat mozzarella
• The cheese in question was produced in Germany for “discount supermarkets”
• The blue was by bacterium, not toxicity

Bacterium is essential to making cheese flavorful. The blue thus could be a good thing, or it could be bad. Control of bacterium is an interesting and ancient security issue, as an article from 1897 explains.

The food value of cheese is dependent upon the casein which is present. The market price, however, is controlled entirely by the flavour, and this flavour is a product of bacterial growth. Upon the action of bacteria, then, the cheese maker is absolutely dependent; and when our bacteriologists are able in the future to investigate this matter further, it seems to be at least possible that they may obtain some means of enabling the cheese maker to control the ripening accurately.

Italians outsource mozzarella to Germany? Engines and suspension, I can believe, but food? What were they thinking? Also notable that the police responded without any illness reported, just suspicion based on color.