Have you ever heard of someone recalling food? Maybe you got a notice saying a food product was, in fact, dangerous and that if you have the food, you should throw it away. Maybe you have had to throw out recalled food. Maybe you consumed some prior to knowing! But when a food item is completely recalled, and they have a supply of the now-terrible food, there’s one way you can dispose of it, and it sure happened.

On March 5, 1973, in Ossineke, Michigan, a truck dumped thousands of frozen pizzas in a hole, in what came to be known as the “Great Michigan Pizza Funeral”. But let’s go back a bit.

Ilario Fabbrini, a Croatian immigrant, moved to the tiny lakeside community of Ossineke, and there he started a factory making frozen pizzas based on Croatian recipes edited for Americans to enjoy. Soon his company, Papa Fabbrini Pizzas, employed 22 people and churned out 45,000 pizzas a week!

But everything changed in 1973.

At the beginning of that year, the United Canning Company, located in Ohio, noticed some of the mushrooms they used were swelling, which meant they had botulism, which is a type of food poisoning. The UCC then notified the FDA, which confirmed that people who ate the mushroom pizzas would possibly be DOA. The company that made the mushrooms was contacted, and they had to recall them ASAP. Almost 30,000 pizzas were involved, costing Fabbrini $30,000 and $60,000 in retail.

But Fabbrini wanted publicity, so he ordered the pizzas to be buried as a funeral, and on March 5, 1973, the deed was done. Hundreds of people attended the event. Fabbrini laid a wreath of red gladioli (sauce) and white carnations (mushrooms) on the grave. There was an obituary. The governor gave a homily. Pizzas were mourned. What can I say?

In the end, 29,188 pizzas’ lives were honored in a VERY SERIOUS(-ish) funeral. He filed a $1 million lawsuit against the UCC and the company that provided the troublemaking mushrooms. Fabbrini received $211,000, although in the early 1980s, the company went kaput.

Thus summarizes the story of the Great Michigan Pizza Funeral, which shows that even serious subjects can be handled with some humor at times. Now, if you don’t excuse me, I’ll start writing my eulogy for Trader Joe’s lasagna (full disclosure: do NOT try their sauce).