I think it's the very reason this feature was added to the Nova engine:
Note: Mission cargo names that start with the asterisk character ('*') are
treated as "quantityless" - i.e. their quantity is never shown in the
player-info dialog and the word "the" is omitted in the message that
appears when the player retrieves that type of cargo from a ship as
part of a mission. This is useful for when the mission cargo is a
proper name.
Perhaps, for the sake of poor Anna, the EVO port should make use of this feature...