Officials, suspecting the milk may contain high levels of dioxin, said the herds could have been grazing on lands where toxic industrial waste may have been dumped illegally, the BBC reported. Government laboratories are analyzing milk samples taken from some buffalo that graze near Caserta, north of Naples.

Inspectors and scientists said the quarantine concerns only a fraction of Italy's total buffalo-milk production. Consumers would have to eat massive amounts of mozzarella cheese for many months for higher-than-normal levels of dioxin to affect their health, officials said.

Nonetheless, farmers' associations report sales of Neapolitan mozzarella cheese plummeted by nearly 50 percent in recent in recent weeks, the BBC said.