THE GREAT PIZZA FUNERAL.

• Author: Boehm, Eric

FIFTY YEARS AGO this March, dozens of people gathered in Ossineke, Michigan, for one of the strangest funerals in American history. They were there to witness the burial of nearly 30,000 frozen pizzas that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had deemed inedible. The pizzas actually were just fine.

At the center of the "Great Pizza Funeral" was Mario Fabbrini, an Italian immigrant who founded Papa Fabbrini Pizzas after settling in Michigan. In February 1973, Fabbrini heard from officials at the FDA, which was issuing a widespread recall of canned mushrooms after a suspected outbreak of botulism at a canning facility in Ohio. Fabbrini submitted samples of his pizzas to the FDA for testing. When two mice died after eating his pizza samples, Fabbrini was ordered to recall thousands of pies.

The "funeral" on March 5, 1973, was how Fabbrini disposed of the potentially tainted pizzas. Trucks dumped the pies into a massive ditch at a Michigan farm. It was partly a cheesy public relations stunt. The Associated Press covered it, and the funeral made the front page of the Detroit Free Press. It was also a public show of accountability during a botulism scare: Better to lose 30,000 pizzas than to lose customers for years to come.

The funeral might have seemed like a jab at the FDA for mandating the recall in the first place. In the weeks leading up to the funeral, as Fabbrini was rounding up thousands of mushroom-topped pizzas from stores and homes across Michigan, the FDA realized it had made a mistake. The lab mice that had been fed Fabbrini's pizza died of an unrelated infection, not from botulism.

"I think it was indigestion," Fabbrini quipped to an A.P. reporter on the day of the funeral. "Maybe they just didn't like my pizzas."

But having already gone ahead with the recall, Fabbrini was left with little choice but to destroy the pizzas. Hence the funeral, where he cooked other pizzas for hundreds of people, including then-Gov. William Milliken, who came out to witness the weird moment. After the pizzas were buried and the governor said a few words over the grave, Fabbrini...