Tomato Scare Italian-Style

Worries about spaghetti sauces from Bologna to Burbank

All the ingredients were in place for a stew of a scandal. At stake were nothing less than the fate of the Italian tomato crop, one of the country's leading exports, and the pride of Campania, a lush farming region that stretches from Naples to the slopes of Vesuvius. At the height of the harvest two weeks ago, deliveries of tomatoes to canneries were abruptly suspended by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture. Reason: suspicions that much of a 200,000-metric-ton crop, perhaps 30% of a bumper harvest, contained the poisonous insecticide aldicarb. Marketed by Union Carbide under the trade name Temik, this...

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