Poison Threat Forces Cake Recall in Italy
Stores in Italy pulled two popular brands of Christmas cakes from their shelves Friday because an animal rights group said it injected some of them with rat poison.
The news agency ANSA said the Animal Liberation Front sent cakes to its offices in Bologna and Florence on Thursday along with messages saying it was protesting genetic engineering.
Both cakes tested positive Friday for enough rat poison to make someone seriously ill, ANSA said. Additional tests were being run on some of the Italian cakes that authorities ordered pulled off the shelves in about 1,000 stores nationwide.
Both brands of panettone--Motta and Alemagna--are made by Nestle Italia. The president, Yves Barbeiux, told a news conference that Nestle does not use genetically engineered ingredients in any of the products that the multinational sells in Italy.
According to ANSA, it was the second attack on Nestle attributed to the Animal Liberation Front this year. In May, several delivery vehicles were set on fire in Florence, and slogans against genetic engineering were scrawled on nearby walls.
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