The Mad Cow Scare has made French Fries a National Treasure

                                                                    Another
French Beef


The French had a field day when Britain was overrun with mad cow disease.
French newspapers, including Le Monde, suggested the disease had something
to do with British toilet habits and lack of a sensitive palate. After all,
how would the average Brit be able to decide whether or not he was eating
an animal that had been fed the spinal column or brain of a second cousin
in a neighboring herd. This incestuous island, which has raised boiled beef
and cabbage to an art form, was bound sooner or later to come down with a
serious disease because of its pernicious inbreeding, both dietary and
genetic.

Firm in its Gaelic righteousness, France refused to import British beef
even after the European Union agreed the UK had met the most stringent
health requirements. French complaints, however, went far beyond the health
of British beef and included the argument that managers of British
abattoirs didn’t know enough French to counsel the animal prior to and
during slaughter, which would guarantee tender meat without a final insult
of stress hormones. The English language, rich in hard, final Anglo-Saxon
words, does not soothe cows on their final journey. French, on the other
hand, is filled with the “music of the meadows” and reminds the cows that
they are actually “coming home.” A Le Monde editorial went so far as to
suggest that the “British are not responsible for their tasteless cuisine;
the cause is in the blood and the very soulless language of the English
nation.”

French Agricultural Minister Jean Glavany announced that the “British have
not yet perfected the killing of beef in the most humane way, reminding his
audience of Parisian butchers that the “guillotine remains the more perfect
instrument of death,” though he acknowledges it takes an experienced
executioner to coax the cow’s neck into the small opening--and sometimes a
treat of organic hay. Glavany told the butchers that this method of killing
prevents the scattering the brain, spinal and fetal matters across the rest
of the carcass. “We have a long history,” the minister remarked, “of
producing healthy beef and slaughtering them in a clean, considerate
manner. We have a close, personal relationship to the animals we consume.
That is the reason butcher shops have photos of actual cows over displays
of meat. People know what they are eating.”

Not altogether. A mad cow scare has hit France and this nation of exquisite
tastes have been forced to take  such delicacies as sweetbreads--cow brains
--off the national menu. Other delicacies such as ‘ris en veau’, made from
the cow’s thymus gland, will likely be a casualty. Traditional French
dishes, including “andouilette” (sausage made from cow’s intestines) and
“cote de boeuf’ (beef on the bone) might be shown the door.  

The public outcry has been robust. Protests by parents have forced all
French schools to remove beef from lunch menus. Hospital, prisons, and 
Euro Disney have followed suit. Buffalo Grill, a 215-outlet chain across
France, has replaced French beef with British “fish and chips,” which are
considered tasteless but safe. 

At the meat market in Rungis, outside of Paris, beef sales have fallen 45%
where canned spam purchases, imported from the UK, have soared.  Russia,
Poland, and Hungary have refused to import French beef. Shares in
supermarket chain Carrefour have been hurt by the spillover effect. A new
worry for France is that many Beaujolais wines are specifically produced to
accompany a meal of robust French beef. The worry is that people who stop
buying beef will also stop buying the wine. In fact, wine sales are down
and Coke sales have doubled in the last two weeks, especially in Paris,
Lyon, and Bordeaux. Consumers are finding that Coke is the perfect drink to
accompany a meal of rather bland root vegetables largely imported from the
UK. The more adventurous are stocking up on couscous. Immigrants from North
Africa and the Middle East are trumpeting the superiority of their low-meat
diets--meat from old billy goats permitted,. 

For some the mad cow scare, based on a small number of infected beef, is
undermining the entire fabric of French culture and life. It is not
uncommon to find on menus in Parisian brasseries “vache folle au point”
(medium-rare mad cow) which is attracting a lot of defiant customers,
reminiscent of the hardy British who vowed to eat beef on the bone no
matter the scare.  
  
The mad cow scare has also raised the issue of French identity and
nationalism. There is a long-held position in France, which found
particular expression after the senseless carnage in World War 1, that only
the French can heal France. This was the case in a number of Picardy town,
totally savaged by the Germans: “This is a wound that can only be healed by
French hands.”

The whisper is that perhaps only native born French should work in
slaughterhouses and on beef farms, raising the issue that non-French, who
do most of the dirty work, are somehow unclean. Le Monde has responded
vigorously to the anti-immigration tone of this whisper-campaign: “France
needs science, not superstition. Mad cow disease, to the best of our
knowledge, is caused by cows eating parts of other cows and susceptible
humans consuming the infected meat. If anyone is to blame it’s the British,
not our immigrant labor. If we want to ban something, we should ban
bone-meal, not immigration.”

The health food industry in France and the rest of Europe has not taken
kindly to this suggestion, countering that “bone-meal keeps men and women
from contracting crippling bone diseases later in life. Why take away the
very thing that puts a spring in the step of the elderly?”

To add to French woes McDonalds reports that it will be flying in beef from
the United States for its French outlets.. “But French fries,” a spokeman
adds, “will be 100% homegrown in France.”