Mafia-Free Food Latest Trend for Italian Foodies

It's getting easier to do just that in Italy, thanks to Libera Terra (Free Land), a consortium of farmers created to do good things with the land, buildings and businesses confiscated from convicted mobsters.
It's fair trade, Italian style — so-called Mafia-free pastas, wines, olive oils and other foods with, say the labels, the "scent of legality."
"It's the right thing to do," said Roberta Barbi, a shopper perusing the offerings at Libera Terra's storefront in Rome's historic center. She loaded up on Sicilian Rizzotto red wine, as well as bottles of Calabrian olive oil and Pugliese breadsticks, gathering together a sampling of items from some of the Italian regions hardest hit by organized crime.
"The limoncello is great — I'm getting that for my mother," she said, referring to the lemon-infused, sweet-and-sour liqueuer that is ubiquitous in southern Italy.
Currently, some 1,730 acres of agricultural land — most in Sicily and southern Italy where criminal organizations are most prevalent — are being farmed by "Mafia-free" cooperatives in the consortium, said Davide Pati, a top official at Libera Terra.
Last year alone, their collection of organic products brought in $5.27 million.
The items — which include pastas, lentils, beans and jars of eggplant, artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes — are available only at Libera Terra shops in six cities across Italy, as well as a few supermarket chains. Sales online are only for Italian businesses.The products include Placido Rizzotto, a wine made from grapes grown on a don's confiscated vineyard. It's named after a famous union leader, Rizzotto, who was kidnapped and killed by the mob in 1948 because of his efforts to fight Cosa Nostra's monopoly over the farmland around Corleone, Sicily (of "The Godfather" fame).
There's no way to know how much Italian food is Mafia-tainted, but cynics say it's a good amount of goods produced in southern Italy. Libera Terra was formed in 2000 to take advantage of Italian legislation allowing the government to confiscate the property of convicted mobsters and either use them or turn them over to associations if they have a social benefit.