USDA issues warning to Cure over horsemeat dish

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Nationally acclaimed Cure in Lawrenceville was inspected and issued an official warning by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service last week after the agency learned of a dinner in which the restaurant’s chef and co-owner, Justin Severino, served raw horsemeat.

The dish, Le Cheval, which is French for “horse,” was the second course of a five-course menu as part of Mr. Severino’s semi-regular “Cureated” dinner series, which features guest chefs from around North America. The dinner on May 8 featured guest chefs Scott Vivian and Nate Middleton, of Toronto restaurants Beast and Home of the Brave, respectively. The horse was prepared in tartare (raw) style, with salt and vinegar chips, cured egg yolk and black garlic mayonnaise.

A UDSA FSIS spokeperson confirmed the visit and the written warning Monday in a statement: “On May 10, 2017, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service was notified that a restaurant in Pittsburgh illegally served horsemeat to consumers during a May 8th event. Within hours of notification, FSIS was onsite investigating the firm and issued a Notice of Warning for illegal entry of horsemeat into the United States. The agency also confirmed that there were no other horse products in commerce or on the menu of this restaurant.” The warning carried no penalty.

According to the USDA, a ban on inspection of horses intended for human consumption has been in effect since 2006 when Congress prohibited the use of federal funds for the inspection of horses. Although the bill lapsed in 2011, there is still no inspection for horsemeat. Ergo, it cannot be sold.

An online petition on change.org calling for Gov. Tom Wolf to ban horse as a menu item in Pennsylvania restaurants had garnered nearly 1,500 signatures as of late Monday afternoon. The petition was created by Joy Braunstein, a former executive director of the former Western Pennsylvania Humane Society.

In a statement that Mr. Severino issued last week, he said that the tartare dish was served as part of a Quebecois feast with Canadian chefs. Horse tartare is traditional Quebecois, and it was sourced from a sustainable horse farm in Alberta, Canada. “This dish was available for one night only, and it is not part of the Cure menu,” according the the statement.

A request for a statement Monday was not immediately returned.