Mad About Beef.A CARTOON OF A DANCING COW ON THE DOOR OF THE Baires restaurant in Rome's historical center exclaims "I'm Argentine!" And that's great news for beef-loving Italians frightened by homegrown meat. One of the few winners of the so-called mad cow crisis sweeping Europe is Angel Moavro, the Buenos Aires-born co-owner of Baires, an Argentina steakhouse. Since a leading news program listed Argentine beef Beef is a key component of traditional Argentine cuisine. Argentina has the world's highest consumption rate of beef, at 68 kg a year per capita. As of 2006, livestock farmers keep between 50 and 55 million head of cattle, mostly in the fertile pastures of the Pampas, and the as a safe alternative for Italians concerned about bovine spongiform spongiform /spon·gi·form/ (spun´ji-form) resembling a sponge. spon·gi·form adj. Resembling a sponge, as in appearance or porosity. spongiform resembling a sponge. encephalopathy--or mad cow disease-- business has boomed. "At first, the beef scare hurt us just as much as everyone else," Moavro says. "But that news program was on a Friday, and that Saturday we set our all-time sales record." Between his two Baires locations, Moavro now serves nearly a ton of Argentina's famous grass-fed beef each week, almost double the pre-crisis level. Overall, Argentine beef exports to Italy have also surged, but European Union European Union (EU), name given since the ratification (Nov., 1993) of the Treaty of European Union, or Maastricht Treaty, to the European Community import quotas Import quotas are a form of protectionism. An import quota fixes the quantity of a particular good that foreign producers may bring into a country over a specific period, usually a year. The U.S. government imposes quotas to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. prevent the increase from being as dramatic. The supply and demand problem predictably results in rising beef prices. But neither that nor the recent discovery of foot-and-mouth disease foot-and-mouth disease, highly contagious disease almost exclusive to cattle, sheep, swine, goats, and other cloven-hoofed animals. It is caused by a virus that was identified in 1897. among cattle in two Argentine provinces has dampened the interest of diners. "You can't grow up eating beef and then just stop," explains Carlo d'Ancona, an attorney dining at a packed Baires one evening. "You can eat it less but, mama mia, you can't just stop." |
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