FLORENCE, ITALY – Imitation Made in Tuscany in the dock. At the Casa delle Eccellenze, in collaboration with Coldiretti, the Florence Chamber of Commerce’s Anti-Counterfeiting Observatory is exhibiting a gallery of horrors discovered and seized in countries throughout the world.
Until 31 October, in piazza San Firenze, the largest gallery of food-sector knock-offs and more ever assembled in Tuscany, entitled ‘I Nuovi Mostri a Tavola’ (The New Monsters at the Table): foodstuffs often harmful to our health, goods which tarnish the Made in Italy international image and damage our country’s agri-food sector, contributing to forcing business closures and layoffs.
Among the 32 examples of products passed off as Tuscan or Italian are California ‘Chianti’, the infamous kits for making our DOC wines in your garage, the U.S.-made finocchiona fennel sausage by Columbus, salamis with such misleading labels as ‘Firenza Salami’ (produced in Germany) and the U.S. milk labelled ‘Tuscan’.
The impostors held in the ‘prisoner’s dock’ at the former courthouse in Piazza San Firenze will be put on trial on Wednesday, 21 October at 11:00 am. They will be ushered into the courtroom by the producers of the originals, members of the Coldiretti National Confederation of Active Farmers, escorted by the Carabinieri of the NAS (Nucleo Antisofisticazioni e Sanità food crime task force). The cases will be heard by a jury of the people – the public in attendance at the Casa – which will hand down their verdict.