In Australia, Penguin has announced it will be pulping remaining copies of The Pasta Bible after someone noticed that it called for “salt and freshly ground black people” to be added to the spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.

According to a Sydney Morning Herald report by Rachel Olding, Penguin — which “turns over $120 million a year” — will be reprinting “7000 copies” of the book, although for reasons not made clear as it is not recalling the first print run, which is already in stores. No figures on the first print run, how many books shipped, or how many remained to be “pulped,” are given. Penguin Group Australia head Bob Sessions says merely that a recall would be “extremely hard.”

By way of explanation, he says that proofreading cookbooks is “extremely difficult.”

Sessions, in fact, seems highly annoyed by the whole incident, complaining that the reprint is going to cost $20,000 ($18,000 USD).

“We’re mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don’t know,” he tells the Herald, not explaining why he’s mortified if there’s nothing to be offended about. “We’ve said to bookstores that if anyone is small minded enough to complain about this very … silly mistake then we will happily replace [the book] for them.”

“Silly me,” observes one commentary amongst many similar ones in response to Sessions. “I thought that proof-readers were paid to find each and every error in the text, but no, apparently not at Penguin.  His proof-readers have carte-blanche to be as sloppy as they like, and not only will Penguin’s head of publishing fail to apologise to any readers who complain about it, they can expect to be labelled small-minded for expecting a text to be professionally published!”