I was wondering if our so far "mini" mad cow scare has effected the availability of beefsteak Florentina. Happy New Year! RR

Not yet. I've had the New York Steak twice THIS year Happy New Year

Oops! Are you still in Florence? Or they make beefsteak Florentina in California?

"Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza..."

"I sing to life, to its beauty, to each of its wounds and each of its caresses..."

I'm sure loving what this has done to chip away at the 50% increase in the price of beef we have experienced over the last couple of years!

Deborah Horn

In a previous life I was an Umbrian sunflower farmer. I'd like to do a past life regression and stay there.
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www.petsburg.com

No,I am here in California but still plan a May visit to Florence and look forward to steak esp.
as i love rare beef.RR

I believe that Bistecca Fiorentina is back on the menus. Diva can tell us for sure.

Yes it is back on menus and has been for a while now. What is happening in the US really has no affect on the meat here (although it has been mentioned on the news).

Moving to Italy and Driving in Italy

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I believe that Bistecca Fiorentina is back on the menus

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Even when the EU banned it, it was still on the menus here. One night during the ban, we ordered it at a restaurant and were told "no, it is not available". We asked if they were not serving it because of the EU ban - and they told us "no, we are simply out of it this evening - please come back tomorrow and we will have it".

We were in the USA when during their mad cow incident. It was interesting to see the difference in news coverage. Here, beef on the bone was banned, but in the USA, we kept hearing about ground meat being a potential problem.

Bill & Patty Sutherland
Tuscan Women Cook
Montefollonico, Italy

The true Fiorentina was banned and not served at all. That being the true T bone cut. They had to cut off the spinal column part which ended up leaving an L bone not a T . I'll never forget the auction that Dario in Panzano held for the last true T cuts. I think Elton John paid something like $5,000 for a piece. Oh and then there was THE FUNERAL and THE FUNERAL 2

Moving to Italy and Driving in Italy

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Originally posted by Robert Rainey:
No,I am here in California but still plan a May visit to Florence and look forward to steak esp. as i love rare beef.RR

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Have your steak but if afterwards, back home you noticed some of these symptoms or these other ones, before blaming them to your credit card statement, see your physician

"Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza..."

"I sing to life, to its beauty, to each of its wounds and each of its caresses..."

It is true that if you are worried about mad cow disease, you should probably avoid ground meat (at least the industrial processed kind you find in fast food burgers) before cutting out fiorentina steaks.

In Italy, almost 100% of the animals found to suffer from Mad Cow were milk cows, not meat cows. This is because milk cows are generally the animals who are offered high protein animal based feed. The energy expenditure to produce 70 liters of milk a day for four to five years is enormous, and so they need a really high energy feed. Meat cows don't really need all that concentrated of a feed to sit around and get fat, and they don't make as much money as milk cows do, so if they get feed at all it's almost always the cheaper vegetable based stuff (soy, for example).

Anyway, the point is that the animals used to make processed industrial ground meat are retired milk cows...they are too tough and flavorless after having been worked literally to the bone for their milk production. Meat cows are the ones used for bigger cuts, like fiorentina.

So before cutting out the steak, I would cut out the Giovanni Rana tortellini, Simmenthal, and Micky D's.

Rebecca (the vegetarian cattle farmer)

www.brigolante.com

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Originally posted by Brigolante:
In Italy, almost 100% of the animals found to suffer from Mad Cow were milk cows, not meat cows.

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Well, a meta cow affected by mad cow has been found yesterday in a farm near Brescia. It was found because every cow in italy must pass a test to check the presence of the mad cow "prione" in the meat before being butchered and fed to innocent people. Now the other cow in the farm will be ckecked too, so the farm might not be able to sell any animal for a few days, if no other animal hit by the same illnes is found, than the case will be closed. Obviously the meat of the animal(s) found ill will be destroyed.

Alice Twain
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I don’t want to take what you can’t give / I would rather starve than eat your bread
I would rather run but I can’t walk / Guess I’ll lie alone just like before
                Pearl Jam, Corduroy

I am really looking forward to the beef.For some reason I never ordered a steak on my last visit to Florence,so I have been waiting 10 years and am hopeing that these few incidents don't lead to panic.What were the number of incidents the last time around in italy? or was it just a reaction to
the English problems? RR

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Originally posted by Robert Rainey:
so I have been waiting 10 years and am hopeing that these few incidents don't lead to panic.

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But Robert, why would a problem in the US about their beef cause panic in Italy? Honestly, makes no difference here whatsoever.

Moving to Italy and Driving in Italy

On my last trip to Florence, I ordered carpaccio in a restaurant and was told they didn't have it anymore because of mad cow disease - which makes no sense. It's not like cooking makes the disease disappear.


Chris

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Originally posted by Robert Rainey:
I am really looking forward to the beef.For some reason I never ordered a steak on my last visit to Florence,so I have been waiting 10 years and am hopeing that these few incidents don't lead to panic.

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Unless Italy has recently imported beef from Canada , I don't think you should be worried about ordering your steak in Florence next time.

"Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza..."

"I sing to life, to its beauty, to each of its wounds and each of its caresses..."

I am not worried about Canadian beef.As far as I know there has never been a problem with Italian beef,But why were steaks with bones"banned" for that period of time? Also according to Alice there is at least one mad Italian cow.The Canadian problem has effected the markets here,people eat less meat,alternatives are being advertised etc.
Again,why was there ever a limitation on Italian beef? RR

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Originally posted by Robert Rainey:
...But why were steaks with bones"banned" for that period of time? Also according to Alice there is at least one mad Italian cow... Again,why was there ever a limitation on Italian beef? RR

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If you search for 'Italian mad cow" you will find many articles about this subject. Here are two of many of them mad cow 1 and mad cow 2. And here is what it could be the answer to your question.

"Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza..."

"I sing to life, to its beauty, to each of its wounds and each of its caresses..."

I love the new spin coming out of the USA on mad cow - seems nobody should worry about it because even though the cow was found in the USA, it is a Canadian cow.

Now the Canadians should learn something from the spin - next time Toronto has an outbreak of SARS - they can tell eveyone not to worry, because it is a Chinese disease - not Canadian.

Bill & Patty Sutherland
Tuscan Women Cook
Montefollonico, Italy

Yes you're absolutely right. We were in Canada over Christmas and the Canadians were getting all huffy that they had (supposedly) tried to warn the US of potential dangers when the outbreak first happened, and the american govt dept (the FDA?) would have none of it.

I heard a radio interview with someone who said that Europe had instituted very stringent controls over all production and distribution of meat products whereas North America is only operating a sampling procedure which is not secure enough.

If this is right, then Italian beef ought to have been so well vetted that any problems are caught before the meat gets distributed. Alice's report would seem to support this.

Beebee

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Originally posted by Robert Rainey:
Again,why was there ever a limitation on Italian beef?

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Because several animals had to be killed because they were found to have the Mad Cow Disease in the past years. In Italy. As I triesd to explain in my previous post, the situation has been "cured" by imposing by law that each and every animal killed (for food) in Italy must be tested to check for the prione. In case it is found positive, than all the animals from that farm are tested too, and if more animals are found positive all of the animals muyst be killed and their meat destroyed. If the only ill cow is the first one, than only that animal's meat must be destroyed. meat arriving from abroad must be checked too.
Also the animal foods that are thought to be spreading the disease are no more legal in Italy. Plus all the meat for sale must bear a stamp saying where the animal was grown an by whom, wheer it was butchered and by whom, where it was sold and by whom.
During last year, due to this severe law, no more animals ill with the Mad Cow disease were found (while in the previous years several cattle farms had to be closed due to the presence of animals hit by Mad Cow), although in at least a couple of cases illegal cow foods were found and confiscated. That one animal found a week ago is an exception that certifies how efficient is our law (once in hitory an Italian law looks efficient) in reducing the risks connected to Mad Cow disease.

Alice Twain
--
I don’t want to take what you can’t give / I would rather starve than eat your bread
I would rather run but I can’t walk / Guess I’ll lie alone just like before
                Pearl Jam, Corduroy

The cow in question was from Canada based on genetic testing which is reliable(maybe Canada can get johnny Cochran to prove otherwise).The more I learn about mad cow the more I worry about beef from countries that don't limit feeding animals meat based food. The USA has banned animal based food since 1997,The EU has instituted a temporary ban for 6 months. I am slightly concerned that my brain will be eaten away and would prefer to eat animals which have grazed on grass.Isn't it kind of disgusting to know that cattle is fed other cattle parts in order to fatten them up? Despite this I will probably still not become a vegetarian.RR

Robert, what Kyle wrote about the 6 months was the original ruling way back when (before there was a beef ban at all). Please read Alice's response above to get the correct and current info.

Moving to Italy and Driving in Italy

The last 'scare' in Europe was in 2000/2001. This was when several French cows were found to have BSE and later cows were found in other EU countries to have BSE. At that time France and Italy both banned meat on the bone. EU and the individual countries have since instituted stronger laws regulating feed and testing. The ban on meat on the bone has been lifted due to these changes. Alice gave an excellent description of the changes. The key item is that all cows for meat consumption are tested. The US does not test all meat cows for BSE. US only tests a random sampling of cows. The recent US changes will prevent the cows that are being sampled from entering the food market before the test results. We had to recall the meat because this was not the rule before Dec. To me, knowing that all meat is tested in Italy gives me a lot of confidence in the safety of the meat in Italy.

Also, Europe does not import meat from the US because of the usage of growth hormones. They would not need a ban on beef because they do not import US beef.

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Originally posted by Robert Rainey:
The cow in question was from Canada based on genetic testing which is reliable(maybe Canada can get johnny Cochran to prove otherwise).The more I learn about mad cow the more I worry about beef from countries that don't limit feeding animals meat based food. The USA has banned animal based food since 1997,The EU has instituted a temporary ban for 6 months. I am slightly concerned that my brain will be eaten away and would prefer to eat animals which have grazed on grass.Isn't it kind of disgusting to know that cattle is fed other cattle parts in order to fatten them up? Despite this I will probably still not become a vegetarian.RR

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Unofrtunately, Robert, the US ban on feeding cows "cow by product" is illusory at best. Here is the real story...

Cow can be fed a blood meal product in addition to their milk. Also, cow bone meal may be fed to poultry, which in turn can be fed back to cows in the form of meal. Both of these actions have the possibility of transmitting disease. The only way to truly be protected to the maximum is to only eat cows which are fed a completely vegetarian diet. You know.... the kind they evolved eating before Monsanto and the other agra business iants started mucking around with our food.

But the real issue is that of food safety in general. What is far more deadly and less publicised that Mad Cow is plain old food poisining with e-coli 0157. Thousands have been sickened from this already in the US and thousands more will be. FOod poisining in the US probably causes thousands of deaths a year but most go unnoticed. The real fear, is that with our highly industrialized food production system, a small breakout of a disease can become large very quickly. If an infected cow is processed at a plant that packs for McDonalds or any of the other fast food behemmoths, a single batch of tainted product will be fed to thousands.

So to be safe, look for beef, fed vegetables, that is minimally processes, boned by hand and ground fresh locally in small batches. Its hard to find and it will cost you a few dollars more, but the safety factor to me is well worth it.

Fiorentina, made from the Chianina cow, fits this description. It is processes in an old fashioned, non industrialized manner. If you buy it from a butcher shop you can see the certificate showing you which cow it came from. In fact, you can actually verify its id number from the outer cuts of the animal. I think a true Fiorentina from Chianina is just about the least likely beef to worry about!

But unfortunately, as the Parmalat scandal shows, the forces of evil have grown to dominate the food industry in Italy as elsewhere. Industrialized food in Italy is something to be worried about. While the animals are tested rigorously for BSE, industrialized food has myriad other dangers and no amount of testing currently done will rid us of the avoidable dangers. We need to