Word: beef
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...does not even kill most infected animals. Yet foot-and-mouth disease was arousing anxiety throughout the world last week, and the virus that causes the ailment in pigs, sheep and cattle was closing borders, destroying livelihoods and bringing to a standstill much of the world's trade in beef, pork and lamb...
...alert," said Chuck Lambert, chief economist at the U.S. National Cattlemen's Beef Association as Department of Agriculture inspectors imposed strict checks on goods and passengers arriving from Britain and France. "We have to re-energize our systems and not be lax." From Sydney to Seattle, worried officials banned European meat imports, confiscated sandwiches and decontaminated arriving passengers to prevent inadvertent infection by a disease that, like everything else these days, is going global...
Compared with policing tourists, policing meat imports is relatively easy. For all the seeming sweep of the new restrictions, there is simply not that much to restrict. With beef from the U.K. already banned because of mad-cow disease, the hardest-hit imports will be pork and goat, mostly from the Netherlands and Denmark. Such cooked and cured meats as canned hams, prepared sausages and prosciutto are not affected because heating or processing kills the foot-and-mouth virus. Certain dairy products like yogurt, Brie and hard cheeses are also exempt, since they are already subject to strict manufacturing conditions...
...mood in Europe is not panicked, but it is worried. Even in Britain, the epicenter of the foot-and-mouth disaster, farm communities may be devastated, but through last week they were suffering in resignation. Denise Walton, who with her husband Chris raises 250 head of beef cattle and 450 sheep in Berwickshire, near the Scottish border, talks sadly about being "at war with a silent enemy, never knowing where it is, and being forced to stay isolated on our farms." Prince Charles gave $720,000 last week to help those hit the hardest; he said he feared a harvest...
...rest of Europe, the arrival of mad-cow in January and foot-and-mouth last week is more recent and thus more alarming. There were lines seven miles long at the Spanish border as authorities made all vehicles from France drive over disinfectant-filled carpets. Beef consumption is down 40% in Germany, Italy and Spain. Le Carnivore, a restaurant in the French city of Nantes that specializes in such alternative meats as ostrich, kangaroo and bison, is booming. French farmers estimated their losses at $185 million a month if all the embargoes against their produce hold...