"Domestic Product" 00 flour..??

[youonlylivetwice]

Hi,
This afternoon I went up to a nearby Italian Grocer to get some more 00 flour.  I noticed that in addition to the prepackaged 00 flour, they also had small bags that had obviously been rebagged from bulk.   I thought just to make sure I would ask if they were the same, so I didn't get home and end up puzzled over the results.  The answer was the prepackaged version was a product of Italy, but the bulk bags were a domestic product... (??)
the grocer went on to say you might actually be getting the same thing because there is so much 00 production in the US that the US ships it over to Italy to be processed and sometimes makes its way back to the US, so there is no way to know on the bulk product whether it was grown here or in Italy.
does that make sense to anyone?  I simply don't have time to read every 00 post to see if this has been discussed, so I apologize if it has.  It struck me as odd that something rather difficult to find is actually produced in such abundance here that we export it to Italy to  be processed.   He didn't hesitate though, he was quite confident in his answer.  And this is a very ethnic store, full of imported Italian goods.

Thanks for any thoughts!

[Pete-zza]

YOLT,

I think I have read every 00 post on the forum and would have remembered something that unusual. I know that a lot of 00 flours are made from national grains supplemented by grains imported from Canada (e.g., Manitoba) and the U.S. Quite possibly some of the final 00 flours make their way back to the U.S. You'd think that the provenance of each bag or lot of flour would be known but with multiple international avenues of commerce maybe that isn't always possible.

Peter