The boss of the biggest buffalo mozzarella maker in Italy and three of his colleagues have been arrested on suspicion of links to organised crime.
The Italian authorities say Giuseppe Mandara - the self-proclaimed "Armani of mozzarella" - and his Mandara Group had links to the Casalesi clan of the Camorra mafia who operate around the city of Naples.
The clan is said to have helped him out when he was in financial trouble in the 1980s.
Assets worth €100m (£78.7m) belonging to the Mandara company were also frozen by the Italian authorities.
"We have seized the whole company," Carabinieri police officer Paolo Di Napoli said.
The firm is not only Italy's biggest maker of buffalo mozzarella, it is also a major global exporter of the cheese which is sold by large chains in Europe, Japan and the US.
The investigation includes charges of misleading consumers on the grounds that the company was found to have mixed in cows' milk with the more expensive buffalo milk and labelled batches of ordinary provolone cheese as a more prestigious kind.
Another charge is for trading in noxious substances after it was found that up to two tonnes of buffalo mozzarella - which has already been taken off the market - may have been contaminated with ceramic residue from a broken machine.
Mandara in 2010 said his company produced 78,000 cheeses a day and employed 180 people.
