Italian salumi are finally coming to the United States!
Americans who have lived in Italy will be salivating, since the USDA is finally lifting its ban on cured meats from some regions of Italy.
“Starting May 28, a four-decades-old ban on the import of many Italian salumi,” according to a NPR article online. The NPR reporter comments: “No more stuffing your suitcases with delicacies bought in Italy, hoping the sniffer dogs at JFK or other American airports won’t detect the banned-in-the-USA foodstuffs inside your luggage,” like Sophia Loren in the film Lady Liberty (1971).
“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,” reports NPR. “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.”
NPR reports on this story.