FoodBanter.com - Don't eat meat? Try some prosciutto!

Don't eat meat? Try some prosciutto!
By Elisabetta Povoledo
International Herald Tribune
Saturday, October 16, 2004

MILAN A man walks into a bar and asks for a sandwich, no meat. The
waiter brings back a bun with ham and cheese. "I said no meat," the man
objects. The waiter replies: "That's not meat - that's prosciutto."

This is no joke - it's a real-life scene from Italy that many people who
do not eat pork will respond to.

It speaks of the visceral relationship that Italians have with ham,
including prosciutto, one so unique that it relegates pork into an
undefined but unaccountably nonmeat, food group.

Ham is "simple to use, simple to eat," said Paolo Tramelli, marketing
director of the Consortium of Parma Ham, a lobbying group that has
successfully fought for the recognition of Parma ham as a protected
local product.

The omnipresence of pork products is most clearly manifest in Italy's
sandwich culture, where prosciutto and its relatives hide under many
pseudonyms: as prosciutto cotto (cooked) and crudo (raw), coppa,
cotechino, guanciale, lardo, lonza, mortadella, pancetta, porchetta,
salsiccia, salumi, spalla and speck, most of them cold cuts, all made of
pork.

In many bars, cafés and even trains, there is often no nonpork sandwich
alternative.

This poses a problem not just for vegetarians but also for observant
Jews and Muslims. As society becomes more multicultural, Italy is likely
to see the partial demotion of prosciutto as the national sandwich
superstar.

Italians eat millions of hams every year.

Statistics provided by the Parma Ham Consortium speak of 20 million hams
in prosciutto crudo alone.

Most Italian homes are more likely to have a meat-slicer in the kitchen
than a blender.

"Just about every family has one," Tramelli said.

There is much to be said for the theory that ham enjoys culinary cult
status here because Italians still have strong associations with their
not-too-distant agricultural past.

"It's enough to know that in our local dialect, pigs were once known as
'the animal,"' a title "now reserved for cats or dogs," Tramelli said.
The pig, if not exactly a pet, was a fundamental element in the family
unit, one that in the end "nourished the farmers for the entire year."

Ask any vegetarian, Jew or Muslim in Italy for an alimentary anecdote
and be prepared to be regaled with prosciutto tales.

Carmen Somaschi, president of the Italian Vegetarian Association, AVI,
recalled a fight she had last year at the Rimini fairgrounds because all
the bread for sandwiches had lard as an ingredient. Only one bun was not
made with lard, a type known as Arab bread, and she asked that the
caterer use it for nonmeat sandwiches.

"You know what they put inside?" she asked, waiting a beat. "Porchetta!"

To not eat meat in school lunches, vegetarian children have to bring a
medical certificate "as though they were handicapped," Somaschi said.

"A doctor has to verify that they're healthy despite the fact that
they're not eating meat," she fumed. "It's uncivil, as though eating a
boatful of salami and French fries makes you O.K."

Last month, the association, which represents Italy's three million
vegetarians, presented a petition on the "right to make vegetarian
choices in public cafeterias" - government canteens, school cafeterias,
hospitals and army mess halls. The association will have a year to
collect signatures before going to Parliament to demand a law to end
what the vegetarians see as discrimination and an attack on their
constitutional rights.

The proposed law "respects the needs of everyone who eats in public
places, whether they are vegetarians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus or Hare
Krishnas," Somaschi said. "We want people to understand the importance
of that."

The vegetarian association has already successfully lobbied Italy's
Autogrill, the world's largest food-and-beverage operator of highway
rest stops and airport restaurants, for more nonmeat alternatives. In
July 2003, Autogrill introduced a vegan sandwich, containing no animal
products, to its more than 900 locations, and this summer it put
association-endorsed pasta meals on the menu. (This did not require much
culinary innovation: The traditional Italian diet is based on pasta and
vegetables.)

More than 950,000 pasta servings were dished out by Autogrill over the
summer, "which confirms there's a demand," said Serena Campana, the
company's director of research and development. But Autogrill also keeps
what Campana laughingly described as a "hit parade" of sandwiches, and
numbers show that ham is still top dog. Autogrill's three most popular
sandwiches (17.7 million sold last year) are all prosciutto-based. In
comparison, Ischia, the vegan alternative, sold 1.2 million sandwiches
in all.

So far, pork's pushiness has not been a major issue with Italy's growing
Muslim population.

"At the moment this isn't the issue at the center of Italian-Muslim
dialogue," said Mohamed Nour Dachan, president of the Union of Islamic
Communities and Organizations in Italy.

His preferred strategy, he said, would be to convince individual
companies to offer alternatives "without attacking the food of
Italians."

Initiatives pop up periodically. About a decade ago, a Rome-based kosher
caterer, Le Bon Ton, discussed the possibility of offering kosher meals
on Italian high-speed trains, but "we didn't get any requests," said
Giovanni Terracina, a manager-chef for the caterer.

Terracina, who keeps kosher, said he had gone hungry more than once. He
recalled an episode two months ago that found him stuck at the Turin
airport for five hours and famished.

"There were these sandwiches with mortadella and speck and I told the
bartender, 'Listen, I'm Jewish. Is there something I can eat? I only see
meat here,' and he replied, 'No, no here's some prosciutto,"' Terracina
said. "There's nothing to laugh about."