Ending the week on a light entertainment note, here we have a story about PIZZA FUNERALS. Specifically, the Great Michigan pizza funeral of 1973.

This came to our attention recently thanks to the ever-awesome Depths of Wikipedia, brainchild of the brilliant Annie Rauwerda, and with a bit of research we dug deep into a world of ceremonial burials for 29,188 frozen cheese and mushroom pizzas.

And, no, we’re not making this up. There are news items and a photo to prove it.

Let’s Pay Our Respects to the 29,188 Lost in the Great Michigan Pizza Funeral

This is the story of a frozen pizza manufacturer getting things wrong. Ilario “Mario” Fabbrini owned the company, who’d lived in fascist WWII Italy and Yugoslavia so fled to the US seeking the land of freedom.

His career became making, freezing, and distributing pizzas as an example of the burgeoning ready meal culture.

Fabbrini’s business started in his home kitchen and was assisted by his wife Olga, the pair adapting traditional recipes from Italy for the US market. By the early 1970s, his reach had increased and he operated a pizza plant with 22 people in his employ.

At the peak, the business was producing 45,000 pizzas each week.

We presume, at this stage of his success, Fabbrini would awake each morn and hear the sound of the great American bald eagle, would down a pint of melted ice cream, and drive his gas guzzler to the plant (note, this entire paragraph isn’t based on any evidence, although the next one is).

The factory was at 6050 Gull Road, Osineke, Michigan and everything was right with the world. That was until late 1972, when botulism well and truly hit the fan.

The Botulism Pizza Contamination!!!

Fabbrini was approached by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) specifically about the nature of canned mushrooms. The business was using these on its super tasty cheese and mushrooms pizzas.

It was discovered the mushrooms, provided by a supplier, contained traces of botulism (a rare but sometimes fatal disease).

With some 29,188 pizzas to dispose of, this colossal volume captured the attention of journalists.

The need to bury all the food led to nationwide media interest. Below is, seemingly, the only surviving contemporary news source. This was published in The South Bend Tribune on 6th March 1973.

According to Fabbrini, he sued his suppliers and he was awarded $211,000 in 1979. But his business didn’t recover and he lost most of that money paying bills and debts.

This legendary story has popped up in the news ever since 1973. The Alpena News covered the story on March 20th 2017 in: Tainted mushrooms end immigrant’s Ossineke pizza factory.

“Fabbrini said he voluntarily recalled his pizza for destruction and started making them again with non-tainted ingredients. And although they made a show of it with the funeral, and a good faith effort to assure customers that the product was safe, the incident was the death knell of Papa Fabbrini’s frozen pizza, Fabbrini.”

Based on that article, Fabbrini moved to San Diego and re-joined the military.  There he worked until he retired, continuing to enjoy pizzas as the years passed on by, which he made in his home.

Noodles Massacre and the UK’s Horse Meat Scandal

These mass foodstuff annihilations are more common than you may think.

It happens quite a lot. Back in 2013 here in England, we had a horse meat scandal. It turned out many ready meals were using horse meat instead of the beef, or whatever, advertised on the packaging.

People were outraged! Not about the scandalous levels of excessive chemicals, preservatives, salt, and sugar in their ultra-processed food, but the horse bit. That’s DISGUSTING. But beef isn’t. As… logic.

Another big one was noodle-based. 10 years ago in June 2015, we ran a post called The Great Noodle Massacre. To quote ourselves from a decade ago.

“Bloody hell, talk about a great tragedy of noodle-based proportions. As the media has been reporting, Nestlé (usually associated with chocolate type stuff) is going to destroy $50 million worth of Maggi noodles. Why? They’ve been banned in India by food regulators.

400 million packs of instant noodles are set to be incinerated after it became apparent they contained a bit too much lead (the stuff in pencils) for everyone’s liking.”

£32 million worth of instant noodles. Gone. This was because India’s food regulators decided they were “unsafe and hazardous” for the general population.

As the noodles had excessive levels of lead and the monosodium glutamate (the latter is linked to obesity, metabolic disorders, Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, neurotoxic effects, and negative effects on reproductive organs).

With 27,000 tonnes of the stuff to destroy, it’s just as well Nestlé got the ban overturned in August 2015. However, the affects of this ban lingered for many years. Food Safety News did a special report in January 2023: Researchers assess the impact of Nestlé India Maggi recall.

This led Indian consumers to shift to other instant noodle brands, ruining Nestlé’s once 80% stranglehold on the market.

The moral of this story? Erm…