Europe has more stringent food safety requirements than the US...so yes, at least some of the laws are in place for safety reasons.
And who says protecting domestic food sovereignty is a bad thing?
My family is 3 generations of living in plantation housing...on stolen land in Hawaii. A big part of how colonialism works is controlling "the essentials". Food production, water, land rights, information, martial force, etc
It seems like the claim is there is some large consumer demand for these foodish items. If there is, then we can expect a huge black market for these foodish products to emerge in Italy. Policía de Italia better get ready for the deluge...Expect Mama Mia to throw away her heirloom cookbooks for the new meatish craze that's about to sweep through Italy.
The soylent Don will be the most powerful man in the country I tell you...Actually, that could be the real reason behind the ban on the foodish the Italians so desperately crave. Soylent Don wants to corner the market? Your multi-national corporations better make Soylent Don an offer he can't refuse before this gets out of hand...
I'm not necessarily against protecting your local food market, I think there are compelling reasons both for and against it. What I am against is politicians being dishonest about their motivations for imposing laws. If they want to protect your local farmers, they should say so. If the real reason is to protect local farmers, so amount of evidence regarding the safety will be convincing, because it was never about safety. This kind of behavior is detrimental to the public discourse.
I've never claimed there is a large demand, merely that those who wish to consume it should be allowed to, as long as there are no negative effects to the individual or society as a whole of course.
I also don't believe for a second that these laws are put in place for safety reasons. They are absolutely to protect domestic farming industry.