New York pizza makers angry at new standards for charcoal and wood ovens

The case is making headlines. In the main streets of New York, it is almost impossible to escape the star product of the American city: pizza. A production so authentic and precious in the eyes of the inhabitants that it has been at the heart of a controversy for a few days. To reduce polluting emissions by 75%, the City's Department of Environmental Protection (DPE) has decided to tackle the coal and wood ovens installed since 2016 in certain establishments. "All New Yorkers deserve to breathe clean air, and wood and coal stoves are among the biggest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality," the ECD said in a statement. In other words, restaurateurs will need to evaluate their exhaust systems and determine if they can be equipped with pollutant-trapping scrubbers. If the latter do not comply, the pizza makers will not be obliged to comply.

"This common-sense rule, developed with restaurants and environmental justice groups, requires professional review of the feasibility of installing emission controls." If the authorities claim that this will only affect a hundred pizzerias in the Big Apple, the decision provokes the ire of consumers and restaurateurs. The former are worried about having to spend tens of thousands of dollars for these new devices. "It's not just the installation costs, it's the maintenance too," worried the New York Post Paul Giannone, owner of Paulie Gee's in Brooklyn. Joe Calcagno, owner of Capizzi Pizzeria, railed with CBS: "Do you know how many pizzas I have to sell to pay for that $20,000 oven?"

And pizza lovers, too, are seeing red. It should be remembered that wood and coal ovens give a smoky flavor to the crust. A unique taste that cannot be reproduced, according to gourmets, by a wood or coal oven, or a cleaner combustion machine. To give weight to its argument, the authorities rely on several scientific studies. And in particular one of them, carried out in 2016 by the scientific journal "Atmospheric Environment": it established a link between air pollution and the high production of New York pizza. The case may be light and secondary, but it was taken seriously by New York Mayor Eric Adams. The elected official also came to the defense of his restaurateurs: "I think that pizzas have saved more marriages than any other food (...) Does anyone not like pizza? Everyone loves pizza.”