Cheesy Scandal

The Mafia, for once, was not involved. The masterminds who pulled off Italy's ripest heist of the year are just greedy cheese merchants who smelled a good thing. When the Italian government last spring auctioned off 19,000 tons of Parmesan cheese that it had bought to support falling prices, a few wholesalers snapped up practically the whole lot--in effect, cornering the market. Ever since, the speculators have released their hoard of the golden, crumbly protein-rich cheese only when supplies were scarce.

As a result, retail prices of Parmesan in many stores have nearly doubled, from $2.70 a pound in midsummer to $4.70 a pound currently. The price hike caused an outpouring of rage. "Bastaf" cried desperate Italian housewives, forced to turn up their noses at the fragrant wheels stacked on their grocers-shelves."When Parmesan went up to $4 a pound," said one Milanese widow living on a pension, "I told my grocer to eat it himself."

Too Passive. Biagio Morelli, 39, a soft-spoken Parma city employee, went even further. He organized Italy's first real consumer boycott. Soon the cramped office of his all-volunteer Confederation of Consumers was filled with irate housewives eager to demonstrate or to sign petitions calling for an investigation. Says Morelli, who charges that the wholesalers made $40 million profit on the operation: "People always said the Italian consumer was too passive and uninformed to be organized. Yet look at the effect we've had."

The boycott, together with high prices, has cut Parmesan consumption by half. It has also inspired the government to enact a punitive measure calling for four-year prison terms and fines of up to $120,000 for anyone found guilty of keeping essential goods off the market for private gain. Some of the Parmesan speculators may yet be arrested on such charges.

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