Where’s the Beef? : Felines Find Fault With Soviet Sausages

Angry meatpackers are suing a newspaper for an article that said their sausage was so bad that even cats can’t stomach it, but editors said they turned to a furry, four-legged jury that proved their point.

“Twenty-four sausage experts don’t eat it at all; five only eat high quality sausage or out of extreme hunger. Only one, the 2-month-old kitten Mura, you can say actually sits down to the sausage,” the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta said in announcing the feline findings.

The dispute started with the literary weekly’s story on June 15 titled “The Cat Doesn’t Know . . .” and was brought up recently in the Dzerzhinsky regional people’s court.

In a complaint signed by Yu. M. Luzhkov, chairman of the Moscow agroindustrial complex, officials demanded a retraction of the newspaper’s report that producers were breaking the law by putting protein additives in the sausage, known in Russian as kolbasa .

Because of a shortage of meat in many Soviet stores, finding good quality sausage has become a fixation for many people. A cartoon in an October edition of the satire magazine Krokodil showed a line of shoppers standing outside a theater, not to buy tickets, but to buy the sausage for sale in the theater’s buffet.

More Aggressive Reporting

The case also shows that the more aggressive style of reporting by the Soviet press under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s encouragement of greater openness is likely to get it into occasional legal trouble. The Tass news agency said recently that a court had dismissed a lawsuit against a film producer by a biochemical plant near Leningrad that objected to his documentary about pollution.

Literaturnaya Gazeta reported about its dispute with the sausage manufacturers in an article titled, “May the Cats Judge Us.” It gave no indication that the case had gone any further than the initial complaint.

It said that using the permission of state quality control officials to add protein additives, the factories were grinding up the skin and bones of cattle and throwing them into the sausage.

Animal blood, protein paste, blood plasma, starch, flour, and emulsions of protein and fat also were part of the gray, unappetizing mixtures churned out by the factories, Literaturnaya Gazeta said.

“Blocks of frozen meat weren’t unfrozen or washed before being chopped, and were happily thrown in with knots of wool and even the trademarks of the factories that produced these blocks. Nails, sand and glass have fallen into the sausage,” it said.

Fauna Cat Lovers’ Club

To judge the validity of its first story, the newspaper said it sought out the Fauna Cat Lovers’ Club in the Dzerzhinsky region, where it is being sued.

Boris Berenshtein fed some sausage to Kuzya, his 2 1/2-year-old cat, “but Kuzya didn’t find any joy in it. Just the opposite, he gave a look like a person saying, ‘What’s that for? What did I do that was so bad, master?’ ”

It said another cat, Gavrila, tests the sausage for the whole family of Maria Klyueva. If Gavrila eats it, the whole family will. If she turns up her nose, so does the family.

In the end, out of 30 cats, only Mura the kitten eats the sausage regularly, Literaturnaya Gazeta said.

“All kitties, like Mura, must loyally love sausage! That’s the way it always has been since man thought up sausage. But why, the devil take them, won’t they eat it?” the newspaper asked. “And why do we continue to eat it?”