Life Without Beef

No one is expecting Europe to convert massively to organic farming. For one thing, the prices are steep—up to twice as much as conventional products. Furthermore, Europe's small-scale, labor-intensive organic farms are not productive enough to feed the whole population. "If somebody decreed today that there could only be organic farming, a lot of people would starve to death," says Marie-José Nicoli, president of France's main consumer organization.

Whatever the long-range effects on the organic sector, many observers are speculating about dramatic changes in Europe's eating habits. Already, there is worry that some revered national dishes are headed for extinction. "There are a lot of Italian dishes that are going to disappear," predicts Davide Paolini, food critic for the Milan daily Il Sole 24 Ore. Among them: la finanziera (a Piedmontese dish that includes spinal marrow), ossobuco (made with marrow bones) and the Fiorentina (Tuscany's celebrated, dictionary-thick T-bone). The E.U.'s ban on T-bones and other cuts touching the spinal column has sparked a virtual revolt in Tuscany, where many butchers and restaurateurs talk of ignoring the prohibition. "Don't take away my Florentine beefsteak," pleads butcher Dario Cecchini. "All of the Tuscan Renaissance is in it, all the poetry of Dante."

Other national cuisines may be similarly threatened. The French could bid adieu to Chirac's beloved tête de veau (calf's head and brain), ris de veau (made with the outlawed thymus gland) and pot au feu (boiled beef with marrow bones). Germans could say auf Wiedersehen to Tafelspitz (stewed beef), oxtail soup and beef-based sausages. Portuguese could lose their tripas à moda do Porto (made with cow stomachs). Spaniards have largely quit eating the bulls that are traditionally butchered after the corrida. Reason: at five years old, fighting bulls are over the 30-month age limit for untested beef. Most bullfight impresarios, unable to pay for the systematic tests, now incinerate the carcasses.

Some food experts, like Luc Dubanchet, editor of GaultMillau magazine, predict that the mad cow crisis could accelerate the trend toward "lighter, more refined, more serene cooking" that began with nouvelle cuisine in the late 1970s. Such talk is anathema to die-hard beef eaters, who insist people will go back to their old carnivorous habits as soon as the mad-cow scare blows over. They cite Britain, which entered the crisis earlier than its E.U. partners, and is now recovering its old gusto for beef. Says Phil Saunders of the Meat and Livestock Commission: "People want to go back to eating red meat because they enjoy it, and British beef is now probably the safest in the world."

There are those who believe that Europe's beef industry will emerge stronger, having weeded out bad practices and developed a better product. Others predict beef will become a luxury commodity, limited to upscale butcher shops and top restaurants. Dubanchet even speculates that it could one day become a "contraband" item to be found only in underground restaurants, like America's prohibition era speakeasies. That extremist scenario seems unlikely. But for many European consumers, the good old days of steak-frites, juicy T-bones and cheap hamburgers may never return.