I am in Orvieto, Italy this week and last night took in, or maybe was taken in by, this pizza fantastica which they called Dracula—mozzarella, Gorgonzola, radishes and salame piquante—so I was glad to see in the New York Times such Italian meats will be allowed in the US from regions where they have been banned for some time. Although mostly vegetarian, I can’t resist sausage on pizza, so am glad to hear when the pigs are healthy at last.
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 in Northern 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.”