European Meat Disaster

Foot-and-mouth disease, while rarely affecting human beings, is a virus that can spread quickly amongst pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, deer, and other animals, and can be transmitted through the air and via the shoes and vehicles of travelers. The disease can mean ruin for the farmers unlucky enough to have their livestock affected. Huge numbers of animals have been destroyed in Britain. Customs officials in the U.S. will spray the feet of airline passengers deplaning from Europe in an effort to control the possibility of contagion, and dogs will be used to sniff out animal product contraband.

If you are planning foreign travel this week, be sure to follow instructions at the airport to counter this insidious outbreak. Be sure, also, to take along some non-meat snacks! And be sure, most of all, to take along a good book. Here are some topical recommendations:

Seven Centuries of English Cooking
by Maxine de la Falaise
British agriculture is being devastated by both BSE and foot-and-mouth disease. So it's important to remember that even before their staple foods were considered unfit for Human consumption, British cuisine was not the envy of the world. It's an old joke, isn't it? In Heaven, you have German engineers, Italian lovers, British cops, and French chefs. In Hell, you get Italian engineers, German lovers, French cops, and British chefs. But the stereotype isn't necessarily true, as cookbook author Maxine de la Falaise makes plain in this sincere homage to seven hundred years of plain old English comfort food. That means something, if you care for dishes with names like "spotted dick" or "bubble and squeak."

Mad Cowboy
by Howard Lyman
Our British cousins are renowned beefeaters, so this season of cattle disease must be hitting them pretty hard. One solution for the English diet, obviously, is a new concentration on vegetarianism. That isn't easy for those who love meat, but perhaps this book, replete with anecdotal evidence of the abuses of the cattle industry and philosophical arguments against the eating of meat, can help. Author Howard Lyman is a Montana rancher, a third generation cattleman. So when he criticizes the trade he once practiced, his criticisms hold weight. Lyman's appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show sparked the American cattle industry to sue Oprah for libelous food disparagement. Not for the squeamish.

Horseman Pass By
by Larry McMurtry
Unfortunately America doesn't have a high-tech "Star Wars" defense system against viral contagion. Our farmers and their animals are just as vulnerable to this sort of virus as are their European and South American counterparts. In fact, foot-and-mouth disease is not unknown within our borders; it's hit us before. Lauded American author Larry McMurtry made an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in rural Texas the background of his first novel, Horseman, Pass By. Memorably filmed as the motion picture Hud (starring Paul Newman), this novel is the elegiac account of a young Texan who watches his beloved grandfather lose his cattle herds to disease, and then watches an entire way of life pass away.

The Lives of Animals
by c Coetzee
Photographs of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease are not pretty. Hundreds of thousands of animals have been destroyed -- some of them shot from helicopters -- and their bodies have been consigned to huge bonfires. Inevitably, such a catastrophe makes us think about how we treat animals. In 1997, South African author J.M. Coetzee delivered two unique lectures on animal ethics at Princeton University (as part of the esteemed Tanner Lectures on Human Values series). Written in novelistic form, the curious lectures portray the "fictional" story of a character called upon to speak on the topic of animal rights at an American college! As entertaining as they are insightful, these lectures have been reprinted in this volume along with critical responses.

How to Cook a Wolf
by M.F.K. Fisher
Why not cook a wolf? So far there are no reported cases of mad wolf disease on the books. How useful, then, is M.F.K. Fisher's classic alternative cookbook How to Cook a Wolf. First published in 1942, when wartime rationing and food shortages demanded (as food troubles in Europe do today) that home cooks economize and get by without an abundance of the usual staples, Fisher's delightful cookbook teems with warm-hearted industry and a surprising depth of knowledge about culinary history. Here are recipes that call for minimal portions of meat, as well as historic essays on how to make soap, mouthwash, and even pet food, at home. A most genteel survivalist manual indeed!