The Great Bucatini Shortage of 2020 and the FDA ’s History of Telling Italians How to Make Italian Food

Michael F. CannonRachel Handler has a  delightfulpiece atNew Yorkmagazine ’s food and restaurant blogGrub Street on how Big Pasta is using government regulation to punish competitors and consumers. The result is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in addition to causing a  shortage of COVID-19diagnostic tests andvaccines, is basically causing a  nationwide shortage of bucatini.On March 30, at the beginning of a  pandemic whose supply shocks were making everything from toilet paper to pasta harder to get, the FDAblocked imports of De Cecco bucatini. The FDA found the iron content of the Italian company’s bucatini to be—brace yourself—10.9 milligrams per pound rather than the 13 milligrams per pound the FDA requires. The product in question is perfectly safe. It presents no threat to the public. It is lega l to sell throughout the European Union. But since the FDA alleges it does not meet the agency’s arbitrary standard, the agency turned a temporary shortage of bucatini into a…less-temporary one. Handler surmises the FDA took the action at the behest of one of De Cecco’s competitors.You might think it implausible that the FDA would seize one manufacturer ’s inventory at the behest of a competitor. If so, you would be wrong. The Great Bucatini Shortage of 2020 isn’t even the first time the FDA told Italians how to make Italian food. In a similarepisode, the FDA once told a  native Sicilian he didn’t know what tomato sauce is.Rosario Raspan...

Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 30, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs