***** The New York Times April 1, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 1; Page 4; Column 1; Foreign Desk HEADLINE: In a Crisis, Vegetables, Not Beef, For British BYLINE: By WARREN HOGE DATELINE: LONDON, March 31
The love of red meat was once so much a part of the national makeup of the English that the French called them "les rosbifs." The 18th-century painter William Hogarth titled a famous canvas portraying the quintessential robustness of his countrymen "O the Roast Beef of Old England."
A well-marbled rib was the symbol of British well being and power, but eating habits have moved on. With rampant disease striking British herds for the second time in a decade, the change is accelerating.
"We've had a huge increase in phone calls and 14,000 hits a day on our Web site from people asking for information on balancing diet and going vegetarian," said Samantha Calvert, director of public affairs for the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom. "There was a poll that said that 32 percent of respondents would consider not eating meat, and that's a very good day for vegetarianism."
The British are shunning beef even though the malady now afflicting their animals -- foot-and-mouth disease -- does not harm people who eat infected meat. The cows and pigs and sheep recover in a matter of weeks, though with weight loss and reduced capacity to produce milk.
People are reacting to the vast coverage in newspapers and on television that has focused on heaps of carcasses being incinerated and on affecting images of farmers grieving over the animals being sacrificed in the mass cull now under way to stem the spread of the highly contagious virus. The images have also engaged the traditional British concern for animal welfare.
"Lots of people are finally making the connection between that neat slice of red meat in the polystyrene wrapping that they buy in the supermarket and that fluffy little lamb being held by the crying farmer on TV," Ms. Calvert said.
The Ministry of Agriculture reported today that the cull had now marked 832,000 animals for slaughter and that the number of confirmed cases had risen by 50 more in the last day to reach a total of 841 in the six-week epidemic.
Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely reported to have decided on a one-month delay of a national election planned for May 3. He must declare his decision on Monday.
Beef sales fell in 1996, when it was discovered that bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad cow disease, could provoke the incurable brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Ninety people have died of it, and five more cases have been confirmed.
"We stopped serving all beef and offal when the B.S.E. crisis hit, and every time we think about putting it back on, something else happens," said Ruth Rogers, co-owner and chef of the River Cafe, one of London's most popular restaurants. She said that diners are eating more fish than meat and that some people choose two appetizers to confine themselves to vegetables, a specialty.
The British government has mounted a vigorous effort to combat what it considers misinformation -- particularly abroad -- about the safety of food here and about the wisdom of moving about the countryside when there are many restrictions to keep the infection from spreading. Tourist offices have reported Europeans and Americans inquiring whether food is available and edible, and customs officials say people are showing up at Channel ports with provisions to last a week.
Contrary to its old reputation, Britain was the most vegetarian country in Europe even before the outbreaks of disease. Ms. Calvert said a study in June estimated that 5.4 percent of people in Britain were vegetarians, and new surveys this month raised the estimate as high as 12 percent -- a level that might not be sustained once the crisis has passed. Figures for France and Germany in the mid-1990's, considered comparable to the British figure a year ago, were 0.9 and 1.25 percent.
Vegetarianism tends to be an urban phenomenon, and Britain's rural population is down to 10 percent, the lowest in Europe, according to a new MORI poll. Its farming community is also smaller and less politically powerful than those on the Continent.
While British farmers' incomes have plummeted, the big British chains, where nearly 80 percent of Britons buy their food, have enjoyed record profits.
Hugo Arnold, author of "Buying the Best," a book on food shopping, said he thought that the current nervousness about food would produce a more discerning and demanding shopper. "In five years' time," he told The Evening Standard, "dinner parties are going to be divided between the people who buy their meat in a supermarket and the people who buy direct from specialist suppliers, farms which have reared the meat themselves, slaughtered it in small abattoirs and can tell you how it was fed.
"What I like about it is that it's a traditional kind of model of going to market, except it's done by modern methods." *****
Yoshie