American gourmets and lovers of Italian food products, your days as food smugglers are over.
In the U.S., they’re called cured meats, the French say charcuterie and in Italy, the word for cured-pork products is salumi.
Starting May 28, a four-decades-old ban on the import of many Italian salumi will be lifted.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that the Italian regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Piedmont, and the provinces of Trento and Bolzano, are free of swine vesicular disease. Imports of pork products from those areas, says the USDA, present a low risk of introducing the disease into the U.S. The disease was first detected in the 1960s and can survive cooking and even long curing.
Starting soon, as long as they receive USDA approval, hundreds of artisanal products will arrive on American tables.
For centuries, Italians have been making some of the highest-quality cured meats in Europe. What’s the secret behind the high quality of Italian salumi?
Many say it’s the quality of the pigs, the climate where they’re raised and what they’re fed.
See on npr.org
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