On Jan 14, 8:43*am, "Gregory Morrow" >
wrote:
> [found on another group...]
>
> Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A29
>
> Bringing Home the Bacon Gets Tougher in the Age of Terror
>
> By BEN WORTHEN
>
> "The Christmas Day underwear-bombing attempt won't just slow
> airport-security
> lines. It probably will also disrupt efforts to provide U.S. carnivores with
> quality salami, prosciutto and headcheese.
>
> Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the
> Nigerian who allegedly tried to set off a bomb hidden in his underpants on a
> Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit. The bomb didn't explode, but it
> spurred demand for pat-down searches, body scans and more-meticulous baggage
> examinations for airline passengers headed for the U.S.
> August Jennewein
> Mark Sanfilippo some of his cured-meat creations on food smuggled in from
> Europe.
>
> Such measures might discourage terrorists, but they are also likely to catch
> chefs smuggling meat from Europe. Chefs such as Rey Knight, who once flew
> from Italy to Miami with a pork shoulder and fennel-pollen salami
> vacuum-sealed and hidden inside a stainless-steel water bottle. Another
> time, he says, he hid a 4-pound goose-liver torchon from France inside the
> belly of a salmon.
>
> Increased scrutiny of international travelers means "I'll have to come up
> with more creative ways" to get charcuterie into the U.S., says Mr. Knight,
> whose Knight Salumi Co. sells cured meats to San Diego-area restaurants.
>
> Mr. Knight and other chefs go to such lengths because it is illegal to bring
> many of the world's most treasured meats into the country. (Fish are OK.)
> The government calls this smuggling. But chefs say their motives are mainly
> educational: They use them to reverse-engineer their own versions.
>
> "Smuggling is something you do with drugs or kids," jokes executive chef
> Chris Cosentino, whose San Francisco restaurant Incanto specializes in
> dishes that use most every part of an animal. "Our goal is to improve the
> food system."
>
> The salami Mr. Knight sneaked back became the model for a finocchiona he now
> sells in his shop for $16 for a 12-ounce piece. And the French torchon --
> goose liver that has been wrapped in a cloth and poached -- became the basis
> of a foie gras terrine he makes on request. A local laboratory he hired to
> analyze it discovered that chartreuse was the secret ingredient.
>
> Because customs officials once caught him with sausages made from donkey
> parts hidden in shoes packed in his luggage, Mr. Cosentino's bags were
> already subject to extra attention. He once got around that by duct taping
> to the inside of his blue jeans seeds for a special variety of chicory he
> found at a pet-food store in Bologna, Italy. Scanners able to see through
> clothing, now being installed in many foreign airports, should put an end to
> such practices.
>
> Wild-boar salami
>
> Many chefs have stories to tell about sneaking food into the country. But
> the practice has been very popular among makers of salumi, an umbrella term
> for cured-meat products. Salumieres say artisan meats are on the verge of a
> big breakout in the U.S. To get there, however, these chefs say they need to
> study the world's best meat products, just as California's winemakers
> studied French vintages a generation ago.
>
> But the government only allows imports that have been processed abroad by
> U.S.-certified slaughterhouses. Top salumi often comes from small European
> villages where people have no interest in following U.S. trade regulations.
>
> "I wish there would be a provision for chefs to bring in foods" for
> educational purposes, says Staffan Terje, chef and owner of the San
> Francisco restaurant Perbacco. "It's contraband, but it's not like its
> ammunition."
>
> Mr. Terje, who's brought back boar prosciutto and sausages made of donkey
> meat, says tasting and taking apart foods allows him to improve the dishes
> he serves in his restaurant. "When I'm traveling I'm usually in a hotel
> room" with only plastic utensils and dim light with which to study the meat,
> says Mr. Terje. "It's like an archeologist," he says, who makes a discovery
> in the field but does his analysis back at the museum.
>
> After sneaking home some prized Italian lardo, a pig fat cured with
> rosemary, he concluded that the producers used animals that weighed more
> than 400 pounds, about twice the size of the pigs typically slaughtered in
> the U.S. He found a local farmer who would grow his pigs that large and now
> uses that meat in his restaurant. "It tastes more genuine," he says.
>
> The government isn't moved by such arguments. Sausages and hams "are much
> more dangerous than people think," says Janice Mosher, an official at U.S..
> Customs and Border Protection, which seizes about 4,000 pounds of prohibited
> meat, plant and animal products a day. "Those items truly have the ability
> to spread disease." The government is concerned that bacteria from a
> smuggled piece of meat will spread through the ecosystem, infecting
> livestock and hurting agricultural production, Ms. Mosher says.
>
> But aspiring Salumieres say they don't have much choice. "We do a lot of
> research in old cookbooks and they all say things like 'add the usual
> spices,'" says Mark Sanfilippo, who opened Salume Beddu in St. Louis in
> 2007. His partner, Ben Poremba, has brought back many prized cuts, including
> a coppa di Testa, a poached sausage made from pigs head and ear meat, and
> culatello, a prosciutto that's cured inside a pig's bladder. To get the
> culatello home, he bought two and packed them in different suitcases. One
> was found and confiscated.
>
> Ms. Mosher, the Customs and Border Protection official, says that if people
> are caught bringing food in once, it's a good bet they'll be subjected to
> extra searches in the future. She says that Customs and Border Protection
> doesn't target chefs, but their exploits are known to the government.
>
> Creminelli Fine Meats in Springville, Utah, owes its existence to salumiere
> Christiano Creminelli's ability to sneak cured meats he made past security
> in 2006. Mr. Creminelli was living in Italy at the time. He brought his
> tartufo, a salami made with truffles, and sopressata, which is cured with
> garlic-infused wine, to the U.S. to show potential business partners. On
> subsequent trips, Mr. Creminelli would hide some sausages deep in his bag
> and leave others on top of his belongings for officials to find.
>
> Then, in 2007, he was stopped at the passport-inspection booth in
> Philadelphia. A police officer led him to a waiting room, and 15 minutes
> later he was taken into a small office by a customs official. "We know what
> you do," Mr. Creminelli says he was told by the official, who was holding a
> file with about 10 pages of information about him. The official told Mr.
> Creminelli: "Don't do it again."
>
> Mr. Creminelli says the encounter made him quit bringing meats back from his
> visits to Europe. Lucky for him: When he flew home from Paris on New Year's
> Day, security officials frisked him and searched through his carry-on and
> checked baggage before letting him on the plane. "Right now, it is
> impossible to take something," he says.
>
> While that may bad news for salumi makers, it made Mr. Creminelli feel
> better about the state of aviation security generally. "If they stop me for
> salami, hopefully they can stop someone who is doing something really
> wrong."
>
> Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A29

Sounds like the old "I Love Lucy" trick needs to start again. Remember
when she pretended one was a baby on her lap?

Kris