The company clearly states on its website and product boxes that pasta is made in the United States
Last week, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Barilla Pasta, marketed as “Italy’s #1 Brand of Pasta," when two plaintiffs were allegedly misled to believe products made in Iowa and New York were actually made in Italy. A federal judge in California ruled that the lawsuit could move forward.
Two plaintiffs decided to sue the company after buying $4 and $2 worth of Barilla pasta, respectively. They assumed that the tricolor Italian flag on the classic blue box and the company’s marketing slogan meant that the pasta they were buying had been made in Italy and shipped to the United States, according to Food & Wine.
The plaintiffs are not only asking the court to prevent Barilla from using Italian characteristics for marketing purposes but are also seeking monetary compensation, stating they overpaid for their box of pasta, according to USA Today. In their legal filing, they claim that they “would not have purchased the product, or would not have overpaid a premium for the product’s purported Italian origin had [they] known that the Challenged Representation was false.”
The Italian company is headquartered in the northern Italian city of Parma but also has a U.S. office in Illinois. The majority of the pastas sold in the United States are produced and shipped from facilities in Iowa and New York. Both the company’s website and its boxed products clearly state that its pasta is produced in the United States – below the nutritional value on their pasta boxes it explicitly says that the product is “made in the U.S.A with the U.S.A and imported ingredients.”
Asia London Palomba
Asia London Palomba is a trilingual freelance journalist from Rome, Italy, currently pursuing her master's in journalism at New York University (NYU). In the past, her work on culture, travel, and history has been published in The Boston Globe, Atlas Obscura, and The Christian Science Monitor. In her free time, Asia enjoys traveling home to Italy to spend time with family and friends, drinking Hugo Spritzes, and making her nonna's homemade cavatelli.