Protectionist Sausage Makers Need Your Help!

Hot on the heels of British Sausage Week, bangermakers in Cumberland, England have formed an association in an attempt to use EU food-name protections to block out competitors who traffic in "lesser quality imitations" of their beloved "Traditional Cumberland Sausage".

The new association's chairman, quoted in a piece titled "Help Us Protect Our Traditional Cumberland Sausage," has "a simple message for all those [straw men] who, over the years, have demeaned, degraded and devalued the wonderful regional food speciality that is our Cumberland sausage: we're taking it back!"

Yeah! There's just one problem with the notion of "taking back" the Cumberland Sausage, though. Clamping down on competition and free trade entrails (erm, entails) having a pretty specific definition of a product and its history. But it seems Cumberland's sausagemakers haven't exactly an ironclad definition of what it means to be a Cumberland Sausage...

So what makes a traditional Cumberland Sausage? The criteria are still being discussed but so far the key ingredients appear to be a high meat content of over 80%, the need for the sausage to be coiled and not linked, for it to have a wider diameter than conventional sausage and a rough cut texture. The sausage should also be prepared in the County of Cumbria.

...or what exactly its history might be. That's where you come in.

But the Association needs your help. Veronica Waller of the LEADER + programme is assisting the group with preparing the application and said: "we need to demonstrate the link between Cumberland Sausage and the area, and provide as much information as possible about its history.

One theory about its coiled shape is that German miners working in the coal and iron ore mines of west Cumbria wanted a sausage that reminded them of the sausages they ate in Germany. We need keen local historians to help us research these theories to build up our case to the EU. Do you have any historical photos of butchers displaying Cumberland Sausage coils, or any old recipe books detailing how to make a Cumberland Sausage? We need to hear from you."

Finally! Someone who wants to know how sausage is made. Would that it were not the folks who actually make the sausagues.

But I digress. You can be of invaluable assistance to the sausagemakers of Cumberland. (Just don't point out to them that they've already admitted that they adapted their "Made-in-Cumbria" product from Germany.) Please call and tell them more about their beloved traditional product so that it can be protected from non-Cumbrian sausagemakers who do not share the natives' lack of knowledge about this cherished Cumberland tradition! After all, tradition -- not the consumer or common sense -- must be protected at all costs!