‘Gastronomic Xenophobia’ in Italy

From the Guardian:

Italy‘s Northern League is not just anti-immigration. It’s anti-kebab. The agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, a league member, said that Italy must block the arrival of all food that had nothing to do with the country’s rich agricultural heritage. What, like tomatoes, which came from Peru, or pasta, which probably arrived from China? Fired with gastronomic xenophobia, some cities have banned new ethnic food shops from opening on their patch. The town of Lucca set the way in January, followed by Altopascio, where a kebab shop was firebombed. Bergamo, Genoa and Prato all followed suit in what La Stampa, the daily newspaper, called a new Lombard crusade against the Saracens. Lucca councillors are outraged at the suggestion that this is racism, directed primarily against the immigrant owners of foreign food outlets. They claim that all they are doing is to protect their culinary patrimony in a campaign that is as much directed at McDonald’s as it is at kebab restaurants. A fatwa has been declared against the use of French butter in parliament, and illegal Chinese vegetables have been uprooted in Tuscany. (What, by the way, is an illegal Chinese vegetable?) Forced on to the back foot, leading kebab chefs presented all-Italian ingredients for their kebabs at a food convention in Milan last week. Happily, the Northern League is finding it difficult to determine which food is ethnic. French restaurants pass muster, but Sicilian cuisine, heavily influenced by Arab cooking, must also be a cause for grave concern.

Italy legalises vigilante patrols

The Guardian reports,

Silvio Berlusconi’s government, which has already put several thousand soldiers on the streets of Italy, will tomorrow legalise vigilante patrols and set out the guidelines under which they will operate.

The plans prompted an outcry from opposition politicians and police unions, but got a mixed reception from Italy’s mayors, who must decide whether they want law enforcement volunteers in their towns. An overwhelming majority of those in favour run cities in the north, where the anti-immigrant Northern League has long argued for wider use of vigilantes.