Not everything that is Italian is Italian!

By MARIA SANMINIATELLI
The Associated Press

ROME -- Imagine a delicious dinner of pasta with meat sauce and grated parmesan. Add a salad of fresh mozzarella and Roman tomatoes sprinkled with Tuscan olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Maybe you'll wash it down with some Amaretto liqueur.

But there's a catch: none of that food was made in Italy.

Foods that look or sound Italian but are produced elsewhere account for $66 billion in annual sales -- nearly half the $135.5 billion worth of real Italian food that is sold worldwide in a year, says Coldiretti, Italy's farmers association.

Italian producers have launched a campaign to set the record straight in hopes of boosting their own sales.
"They might not be illegal, but they are deceptive," Coldiretti's spokesman, Paolo Falcioni, said. "It's wrong for two reasons: You take the [market] of the real food, but most importantly, you're deceiving the consumer."
The fine print may identify food as not coming from Italy, but Italian flag colors or Italian references on labels can lead rushed consumers to think otherwise, Falcioni said.

For Italians, many of whom believe that they have the world's best cuisine, that's tough to swallow.
"I was in China four days ago, and in a supermarket in Shanghai I bought balsamic vinegar from Modena -- with the label written in Italian -- that was made in Germany!" Falcioni said.

Italians say the finest balsamic vinegar is produced in the small northern Italian city of Modena, which is also home to automaker Ferrari. It's expensive: a flask the size of a perfume bottle can cost $100.
The top buyers of fake Italian food are in Australia and the United States, where a mere 2 percent of "Italian" cheeses are made in Italy.

Gary Litman, vice president for European affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said it's too late to rename imitation Italian products that are already firmly established. "You cannot change history that easily," he said. Litman noted that, unlike the European Union, U.S. law requires labels to state exactly where products are from.

In the Know

Falso

Some foods that look or sound Italian but are produced elsewhere:

Olive oil from Spain featuring a label with a picture of Rome's mythological founders, Romulus and Remus.

Roman-style tomatoes grown in California.

Imitations of Parmesan cheese produced worldwide.

Mozzarella cheese made with milk from American or Australian cows.

"Italian" ragu -- meat sauce with basil -- made in Estonia.

Pecorino cheese from Shanghai, China.

"Perfect Italiano" ricotta cheese made in Australia.

Provolone cheese made in Wisconsin.

"Amaretto Venezia" liqueur made in Germany and sold in bottles shaped like that of original Amaretto di Saronno.

SOURCE: Coldiretti