More than half of the regional land in Campania is used for agriculture, and therefore the economy of the region is adversely affected by the waste crisis. Between January and March 2007, 30,000 kilograms of waste were burned on agricultural land, with a revenue of more than €118,000. In the region, over 12,000 cattle, river buffaloes and sheep had been culled before 2006. High levels of mortality and abnormal foetuses were also recorded in farms in Acerra linked to elevated levels of dioxin. Local studies have shown higher than permissible levels of lead in vegetables grown in the area. The government blames the Mafia's illegal garbage disposal racket.
In March 2008, dioxin were found in buffalo milk from farms in Caserta. While only 2.8% of farms in Campania were affected, the sale of dairy products from Campania collapsed in both domestic and global markets.
A chain reaction followed, in which several countries including Japan, China, Russia and Germany took various measures ranging from the mere raising of the attention threshold to the suspension of imports. The Italian institutions activated almost immediately, even in response to pressing requests from the European Union, a series of checks and suspended, in some cases, the sale of dairy products from the incriminated provinces. Tests had shown levels of dioxins higher than normal in at least 14% of samples taken in the provinces of Naples, Caserta and Avellino. In the provinces of Salerno and Benevento, no control indicated dioxins positivity. In any case, the contamination has affected, in a limited defined manner, the farms used to produce the PDO buffalo mozzarella DOP. On 19 April, China definitively removed the ban on mozzarella, originally activated on 28 March 2008, and tests held in December 2013 in Germany on behalf of four Italian consumer associations have highlighted dioxin and heavy metal levels at least five times lower than the legal limit.