Barilla sued for misleading customers into believing pasta is made in Italy

US federal magistrate judge says Barilla can’t avoid lawsuit for false and deceptive advertising

Pasta giant Barilla is facing a lawsuit for false and deceptive advertising (Barilla / YouTube)

Top pasta manufacturer Barilla has been sued for false and deceptive advertising after a judge found the packaging of the brand could deceive customers about where its products are made.

A federal magistrate judge on Monday said the packaging of the brand, which claims to be Italy’s number one brand of pasta, could lead customers to believe its products are actually made in Italy.

Matthew Sinatro and Jessica Prost had filed a class action suit against the pasta giant last year and said they purchased multiple boxes of Barilla spaghetti and their angel hair pasta as they thought the products were made in Italy.

They said in their lawsuit that the packaging of Barilla spaghetti also reinforced the idea that the product was made from authentic Italian ingredients as the box has the green, red and white colours of the Italian flag.

While the company did originate in Italy, it is now an international group headquartered in Illinois and its pastas are made in Iowa and New York, according to law news portal Courthouse News Service.

The Barilla website said the company is “now an international group present in more than 100 countries” and “is recognised worldwide as a symbol of Italian know–how”.

In their lawsuit, Mr Sinatro and Ms Prost claimed Barilla took advantage of their customers’ readiness to pay more for pasta products that look and sound authentically Italian while “cutting costs and reaping the financial benefits of manufacturing the products in the United States of America”.

Judge Donna Ryu said Mr Sinatro and Ms Prost have “sufficiently shown they suffered an economic injury” and that they would not have purchased the pasta had they known that it was not made in Italy.

She added that the pasta giant can’t avoid the lawsuit for false and deceptive advertising.

According to Walmart’s website, a box of Barilla angel hair pasta costs twice as much as the Great Value brand.

Meanwhile, it was recently reported that Barilla was expanding its partnership with Be MY Eyes, a platform that provides live audio and visual support for blind and visually impaired consumers by incorporating QR codes on the packaging of ten of Barilla’s most popular classic pasta offerings.