Italian investigation into pasta price-fixing begins as industry’s “blame the biofuels” strategy fails to win consumer, government acceptance

In Italy, Italy’s antitrust agency announced an investigation into illegal price fixing in Italy’s pasta industry. Pasta makers have raised prices by 60 percent this year, citing the 60 percent increase in worldwide wheat prices and the fact that 60 percent of the cost of pasta is wheat.

“Yes, the price of wheat has risen, but it has simply gone back to 1985 levels,” Rosario Trefiletti, president of the Federconsumatori consumers’ association told CNN. “So who’s been profiting from low prices these past 20 years?”

The USDA’s chief economist blasted the Washington Post at the National Farmers Union meeting last month over an article connecting high wheat prices to ethanol demand. He said the spike in wheat prices had nothing to do with ethanol; that the 2007 wheat crop was planted before corn prices spiked, and that the price increases is the low wheat harvest yields in Canada, the Ukraine, Australia and the European Union.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said that linking biofuel crop demand and higher commodity prices was only speculation at this stage. He said that further study would be required to firmly establish such a linkage, noting that it is not likely that biofuel demand is responsible for the increase in Italian pasta or Mexican tortilla prices.

More than 200 articles have been published since the summer criticizing biofuel production for causing the recent increase in global corn and wheat prices.

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