Is That a Salami in Your Pocket Or Are You Just Trying To Kill Me?
I found this in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal yesterday and had to track it down this morning.
Apparently gourmet chefs have been smuggling foreign meats into the U.S. for years. The tone of the article is generally that these are poor put upon chefs.
“Smuggling is something you do with drugs or kids,” jokes executive chef Chris Cosentino, whose San Francisco restaurant Incanto specializes in dishes that use most every part of an animal. “Our goal is to improve the food system.”
Now I have nothing against good food and figuring out recipes. (For God’s sake man, look at me from the side.) But, this is stupid. You have to read a while but you eventually find out why Customs has a beef. (I couldn’t help it sorry.)
Sausages and hams “are much more dangerous than people think,” says Janice Mosher, an official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which seizes about 4,000 pounds of prohibited meat, plant and animal products a day. “Those items truly have the ability to spread disease.” The government is concerned that bacteria from a smuggled piece of meat will spread through the ecosystem, infecting livestock and hurting agricultural production, Ms. Mosher says.
I find it hard to believe that there isn’t another answer to this problem beyond smuggling. As much as we might not like it, the rules are the rules and we should all follow them.
The final word of the article sums it all up:
While that may bad news for salumi makers, it made Mr. Creminelli feel better about the state of aviation security generally. “If they stop me for salami, hopefully they can stop someone who is doing something really wrong.”
’nuff said.
Category: Politics
Good stuff Charlie, you might want to embed the link bud. If you don’t know how, just throw it down here and I can do it for you.
My bad TSO. I was trying to it real fast and in a hurry. I fixed it. Thanks for looking over my shoulder…
When will these people just start irradiating food so we don’t have to worry about this stuff…..
BACK OFF!!! I have a salami and I know how to use it!
We need amnesty for undocumented sausages.
Foot and mouth disease aint to fool around with.
Foot and mouth is nothing to fool around with, but not likely to come in on an unlicensed salami. In point of fact, if memory serves, it can’t come in on processed meat at all. It takes raw, it takes contaminated dirt. Etc. Bigger concern are people who have been on farms and such. Guess what, technically anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan qualifies as having been on a farm given the number of household with chickens and other farm animals (and lack of barnyard sanitation).
A lot of the “diseases” are the same ones that have the food nazi’s demanding that everything be cooked well done (though won’t help with CJD/Mad Cow), no raw eggs, nuke every surface and everything to kill every last microbe (even the ones we need to live), no rare steaks, no alcohol, no fun, no how, no way. Some common sense would be nice, but is not likely. Alas. It’s less about real health than power.
Or, I could just be still sore about a jackass bigot of a judge and attendant food nazis who declared that haggis was unfit for human consumption and therefore could not be imported to the US.
This is another non-issue. i work with a guy from LA. True Cajun. 3-4 times a year he makes sausage. no telling whats in it exactly. Pretty sure USDA isn’t involved. Best sausage i’ve ever had.
The differnece is that when your friend from the greatest state ever makes sausage it is from things already in the US. Hence there is no chance of forgein diseases getting started that domestic animals have no resistance.
The differnece is that when your friend from the greatest state ever makes sausage, it is from things already in the US. Hence, there is no chance of forgein diseases getting started to which domestic animals have no resistance.