Swiss Sausage Saved

Swiss carnivores can breathe a sigh of relief after producers told Swiss media Sunday that the country's national sausge -- the cervelat -- has been saved.

Producers have told media that the country’s national sausage -- the cervelat -- has been effectively "saved."

The cervelat had been under threat after a ban was slapped on Brazilian cows -- whose intestines are a vital ingredient in the sausage’s skin -- over mad cow disease concerns in 2006.

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But representatives of the meat industry said its future was now assured thanks to imports from Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

"We don’t need to talk about a cervelat crisis anymore," said Kurt Zenger, head of sausage production at the Bell food business.

"These new Latin American markets have recently increased their deliveries of intestines. We are able to guarantee 100 percent of our cervelat production," he told weekly newspaper Le Matin Dimanche.

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Balz Horber of the Swiss professional meat union told the paper that "there is no danger of the cervelat becoming a luxury item. We can say that it’s saved."

In January, a multi-disciplinary taskforce of veterinarians, meat producers, and bureaucrats was created to save the cervelat.

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Parliamentarian Rolf Buettiker at the time described the sausage as representing "down-to-earth simplicity, the romanticism of the campfire, and national pride."

Source-AFP
RAS/L

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