 It is the 5th of March 1973 and a truck is backing up to a mass grave. The people surrounding the open pit are going to see something that will go down in history. After the truck has backed up, it tips its flatbed and its frozen material slides into the ditch. Now as I describe this you might be thinking that this is a war crime. War crime no, but to me definitely a crime. But the people surrounding the ditch are witnessing is a mass burial, but not of people, instead it is over 29,000 frozen pizzas. The man overseeing it is Mario Fabrini. The rather flamboyant event is a statement of sorts, but we'll come back to that in a bit. My name is John, welcome to Plain Difficult and today we're looking at the great Pizza Funeral of Michigan. Pizza is my favourite food, it's delicious, and by mentioning it I've found a reason to cook one. Now as I make this pizza I'm going to talk about Mario Fabrini. He had left communist Yugoslavia and emigrated to the small Michigan USA town of Asenki. This was just after the Second World War. He was a bit of an entrepreneur, and to make some extra money he began making and freezing pizzas in his home for sale in local markets. His pizza business did do rather well, and within 10 years he had one of the country's most modern pizza factories. The company was called Papa Fabrini Pizzas, and the factory had the capacity to make several hundred thousand a week. The impressive growth of the company from cottage industry to fully fledged factory is really impressive. Mario definitely did do good. Although the final product rolled out of his factory, like most industries Mario's relied on a supply chain. Different suppliers produced the cheese, the flour, ingredients for the sauce, and even the toppings. One of which was mushrooms. Instead of fresh ones, like the ones you get off the vegetable aisle in the supermarket, Mario used tin ones. Nothing really wrong with that as it reduces the risk of waste and rotten batches. It has a longer shelf life which allows for better logistics planning, so pretty much all good. Mario's supplier, Tolono Pizza Products, got its mushrooms from the United Canning Company of East Palestine, Ohio. Yes, that one. A spanner would be thrown in the works for the pizza company when an odd defect was discovered on one of the United Canning Company's cans. Some were found to be bulging, which is a hint for some kind of contamination, which is definitely not good. The contents were sent off to the FDA, and the results were pretty bad. Botulism. So what is botulism? I mean, it kind of sounds like a medieval plague. It is a fatal illness caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium, clostridium, botulinum. Not good if it's in your food. Tolono Pizza Products were informed about the whole killer bacterium, who then told Mario. He would also be contacted directly by the FDA on February 19th, 1973, and told to recall his products, roughly around 30,000 pizzas. This had a street value of $60,000, with a cost price of $30,000. So Mario the Mad Lad he was decided to try and make some lemonade with the lemons he had been given, i.e. 30,000 useless frozen pizzas. Well, how about a mass funeral to show the public he was complying, and to make a little bit of publicity for his company? He set the date for the 5th of March 1973 and themed the occasion. Hundreds would attend, including William Millican, the governor of Michigan. The pizzas would still be in their wrappers and were poured into the 18 foot or 5.5 meter deep hole with four dump trucks. Mario then laid a reef in the colours of red and white. Now Mario didn't blame his supplier per se, but he did have to get his money back. Fabrini launched a $1 million lawsuit against United Canning and the Tolono Pizza Products Company. It was settled in 1979 for $211,000, but sadly the company would wind down a few years later. Now as a bit of salt in the wound, the initial FDA test results were overturned upon further investigation. You see the presence of botulism was tested via the use of lab mice, but the depths of the laboratory mice used in the test were confirmed to be from an unrelated illness. Well, that's just grand isn't it? At least we got a piece of funeral out of it. These are the plain difficult production. All videos on the channel, creative commas, attribution, share are like licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in the currently cold and wet corner of southern London UK. I have Instagram and a second YouTube channel, so check them out if you want to see other stuff I get up to. And also I have YouTube members and Patreon members, so thank you very much for your financial support. All that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please.