300,000 Wheels of Cheese Destroyed in Italian Earthquake
Photograph by Getty Images/Giuseppe Cacace/Stringer
If the history of the world was written by cheese instead of humans, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 would hardly deserve a mention. Krakatoa would be long forgotten. World Wars, forest fires, tsunamis–all lost. But Monday, May 21, 2012, would forever live in infamy.
Yesterday, 300,000 wheels of cheese–mostly Parmesan and Grana Padano–were destroyed in an Italian earthquake, making it one of the worst incidents of cheese loss (unrelated to eating) in recent memory. In fact (and more sad, of course) at least six people died and many more were injured as damage from the quake spread throughout Emilia-Romagna, one of Italy’s biggest regions for food production. The destroyed cheese was worth an estimated 250 million euros, and weighed thousands of tons.
The epicenter of the quake was near Modena, which is itself famous for its arduously distilled balsamic vinegar. There’s no word on how many barrels of balsamic were lost.
[via Sky News]