The United States Department of Agriculture will relax a decades-long ban on the importation of many Italian cured-pork meat products from some regions of Italy starting May 28, including sought-after staples such as salami.
On Friday, the department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services announced that an in-country assessment had determined that four regions and two provinces of Italy are free of swine vesicular disease, a dangerous communicable ailment that infects pigs, and that “the importation of pork or pork products from these areas presents a low risk.”
Some pork importers and producers welcomed the changes, saying they would allow more Italian cured-pork products to make their way to American tables. But many were unable to judge the scope of the ruling because the Inspection Services did not specify what standards would now have to be met by Italian producers, nor the expense of meeting them. The agency did not immediately provide more details about its decision.
“Once this rule is in effect, imports will be approved,” said Lyndsay Cole, a spokeswoman for the Inspection Services, referring to the May 28 date, “but some individual shipments may need to be certified in the future.” Since the ban, believed to have been in effect since at least the 1960s after a series of European livestock diseases, some cured pork products were still imported from Italy if they were inspected and certified according to stringent standards. But only certain producers could afford the expense of trying to win certification. It is unclear how certification methods will change as a result of Friday’s ruling.
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