Aired on July 12, 1993: Radio Prague

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Where Have All the Cattle Gone?

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Every once in a while, I run across a foreigner living here, or visiting Prague, and they will complain about the food. Their criticism centres around the general heaviness of Czech cuisine. "There's too much meat," they say, or, "it's cooked with too much oil." I don't know why, but Western visitors to the Czech Republic seem to be affected by collective amnesia about their own homelands' fare. McDonald's is nothing, if not a restaurant which has earned its vast fortune by plying Westerners with too much meat and oil.

I find Czech food quite substantial, and for the most part I enjoy it. I have discovered I have a particular fondness for dumplings and goulash. The whiners and whingers from the West are right in one aspect though, Czech food is based on meat -- notably beef and pork.

Last week I went on a lightning tour through parts of Bohemia and Moravia. I went hiking in the Giant Mountains, in Northern Bohemia, and in the Beskydy Mountains, in Moravia. There were plenty of opportunities to enjoy my dumplings and goulash, and I did. But as I motored through the countryside in my rented Skoda Favorit, I noticed something unusual about the scenery. It was pastoral paradise, a constant, lovely panorama of rolling hills, budding trees and pleasant farms. But, where, I kept asking myself, are all the cows? For that matter, I couldn't see any farm animals at all.

I was particularly disturbed by the absence of cattle in this bucolic landscape. Now, I'm not saying I inspected each farm closely, but you would think that over a week of driving through the countryside, I'd see at least a few farm animals. The Czech Republic does have cows, I am sure. Last month the European Community banned imports of beef and dairy products from the Czech Republic, and there was a great outcry because of it. The EC imposed the ban because traces of foot-and-mouth disease were found in Eastern European beef exported to Italy. The infected beef had not come from the Czech Republic, and the ban was seen as both unfair, and unnecessary.

The outcry was quite logical because the Czech Republic exports over a billion and a half crowns in meat to the European Community every year. So you see, there are reliable indications that Bohemia and Moravia does produce beef. Now, where was it all?

Alas, this is not an answer I was able to determine by simple observation. Perhaps Czech cows are shy. Perhaps they like to keep themselves out of the public eye, a good idea if they are trying avoid the fate of becoming so much goulash and beefsteak. As the week progressed, and I scrutinized the farms I passed more closely; I saw a few sheep, I smelled a pig-barn, and I even noticed a number of horses. Still no cows.

Then on my last hike in the Beskydy Mountains I saw them; two cows. The were quietly chewing their cud, but, I noticed, behind a screen of bushes and low trees. If I had been in a car, and not on foot, I never would have seen them. They seemed content, as all cows do, I suppose, and that night, as I settled down to a dinner of steak and chips, I felt just a twinge of guilt as I took my first bite.

Maybe there are some things you just shouldn't question too closely.

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Copyright 1993, M. Tundra