Post-Communist Deregulation Brings Poisoned Paprika To Hungary's Markets

BUDAPEST - Somebody is spiking Hungary's spice of life.

Sales of paprika, the sunset-colored powder that occupies pride of place in the spacious culinary pantheon of this central European country, were suspended recently after the discovery of large amounts of lead-rich red paint lacing up to one-third of the paprika samples tested by the government.

A nationwide manhunt against what a spokesman for the National Police Headquarters called "the biggest and most serious food-adulteration case in the country's modern history" has netted 18 people so far. At least 40 people have been hospitalized with lead poisoning after eating dishes tainted with poisoned paprika. The crisis is so serious that Prime Minister Gyula Horn has appointed his deputy, Gabor Kuncze, to head the probe.

There are many theories about a motive - including an international conspiracy to destroy Hungary's export markets and schemes to hurt tourism here - but the generally accepted reason is profit. According to police, nefarious dealers figured that cutting paprika with a toxic concoction of flour and paint could earn them significant booty. In a nation of 10 million people who consume almost a pound of the stuff per capita a year, they weren't far off.

According to lawmakers and economists, the plot to taint Hungary's favorite spice could serve as a bitter lesson to this nation, which since 1989 has been in the forefront of former East-bloc countries emerging from four decades of communism. The scandal, they say, reflects the dangers of rushing wildly from an overly controlled economic system to an almost unregulated one.

The fact that paprika is involved, they say, virtually guarantees the lesson will be learned. Hungarians are almost as proud of their paprika and their cuisine, the sole oasis in the culinary desert that is present-day Eastern Europe, as they are of their unusual language.

"Without paprika, we have no soul," said Gabor Szekelyi, the chef at Gundel, Hungary's most famous restaurant, situated near the Budapest Zoo. Szekelyi, who learned to cook in his grandmother's kitchen, calls the spice "the key to my art."

Hungary produces about 6 percent of the world's supply of paprika, varying its flavors from fireball pungent to sugary sweet.

According to Hungarian politicians, the somewhat disorderly breakup of another monopoly led to the recent paprika crisis.

Before 1989, two state-owned mills dominated the paprika market in Hungary. But with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, a widespread liberalization occurred in food processing. Within two years, 70 mills, all of them private, were grinding paprika.

The economic and political changes that occurred throughout the former Warsaw Pact countries were accompanied by an almost complete breakdown in government quality controls. Scandals involving fake vodka in Poland and bad cigarettes in Bulgaria were commonplace. Such problems didn't help an agricultural sector already reeling from the changes.