Life Without Beef

Roberto Gloria has a sign touting Danish beef in the window of his Rome butcher shop, but nobody's buying. Red meat used to make up 60% of his business, he says, but since the first case of "mad cow" disease was discovered in Italy last month, "no one even asks for it. Shoppers are terrorized." Meanwhile, at a bustling organic meat and vegetable market on Paris' Boulevard Raspail, greengrocer Gérard Courvaisier is all smiles. "Business is up 30% here. People suddenly see us as a refuge. The mad cow crisis has been a real shot in the arm for organic producers."

Similar scenes are being played out across Europe these days as panicky consumers are abandoning beef in droves and turning to what they consider safer alternatives: pork, poultry, lamb, fish and, increasingly, organic fruits and vegetables. Some adventurous souls are tucking into more exotic fare like ostrich, emu, bison and kangaroo. With certain beef products officially banned and others looked on with growing suspicion, there is a danger that some traditional European dishes, from ossobuco to côte de boeuf, may be headed for extinction. Such fears may well be exaggerated. But one thing seems certain: "mad cow" disease is changing the way Europeans eat and could have far-reaching effects on the way food is produced, marketed and prepared in the future.

The latest panic over bovine spongiform encephalopathy and its brain-wasting human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, erupted late last year. The first trigger was the recall of possibly tainted beef—believed to be the main vector of human infection—by three French supermarket chains. Then came reports that Germany, Spain and Italy, previously untouched by the epidemic, had discovered their first bse cases. "I lost between 50% and 60% of my customers overnight," says Paris butcher Alain Lamarchand.

Across the European Union, beef consumption was down by an average of 27% last month and export markets have collapsed. In Germany, Spain and Italy, sales have plunged between 40% and 50%. France's turnover has fallen by some 30%. Only in Britain, where the epidemic started in the 1980s, causing 83 human deaths and prompting the slaughter of nearly 5 million cattle, has consumption returned to pre-bse levels.

Seeking to curb the epidemic and restore consumer confidence, the E.U. has adopted a series of draconian measures. Among the requirements: all untested cattle older than 30 months must be purchased and destroyed; high-risk materials like brains, spinal matter and tonsils must be eliminated from the food chain; and animal feed containing meat and bone meal, widely suspected of spreading the infection, must be banned and existing stocks destroyed.

Estimating the cost of such measures at $2.8 billion this year, E.U. agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler has warned that the Union's farm budget could be strained to the breaking point. Meeting in Brussels last week, E.U. finance ministers approved an additional $900 million but warned that any further costs would have to be met with funds from other programs.

The budgetary crisis has prompted Fischler and others to call for a radical reform of the E.U.'s $37 billion Common Agricultural Policy, shifting a share of its massive subsidies away from large-scale intensive farming toward more environmentally friendly producers. With European farm lobbies clamoring for more emergency aid and threatening mass disruptions—like the French and Belgian protesters who blocked roads with tractors and burning tires last week—it remains to be seen whether the politicians will have the stomach to push through sweeping changes. But Fischler did take a first step last week by proposing a 90-head limit on the number of cattle each producer can raise.

Though the farmers typically made the most noise, they were hardly the only ones affected by the crisis. At the Paris wholesale market in Rungis, white-smocked vendors wander gloomily among hanging sides of beef as a trickle of customers—mostly butchers and restaurateurs—poke and prod the carcasses. Especially hard hit is Francis Fauchère, whose firm Eurodis caters to supermarkets, restaurant chains and school cafeterias—many of which have eliminated beef from their menus. "What's killing us is the doubt," says Fauchère, whose sales plunged as much as 60%. "All this meat is tested and traceable, but people feel as if they were lied to."