Supply of Baby Back Ribs Will Be Tight
As Denmark Is Shut Out of U.S. Market

By DEVON SPURGEON, JILL CARROLL and SCOTT KILMAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- Rural America is so rich in livestock that last week's announcement of an immediate U.S. ban on meat imports from Europe evoked barely a yawn. Who, after all, needs Italian ham or French chops?

But Americans are about to learn the depth of their dependence on meat from a land better known for giving the world Legos and Carlsberg beer. Not only is Denmark, a nation less than half the size of Kentucky, one of the biggest pork exporters on the planet, but it pioneered a delicacy widely -- and wrongly -- regarded as an American original: baby back ribs.

A popular restaurant dish in this country, baby back ribs are smaller and more delicate than the traditional American pork spare rib. Some devotees say they are meatier, too. Typically served slathered with spicy barbecue sauce, baby backs come from the section of the hog's ribcage nearest the spine, rather than from the flatter section nearer the tips of the ribs, as conventional spare ribs do.

Denmark supplies roughly half the baby back ribs eaten in the U.S., a fact that whipped some American restaurateurs into a panic last week. The ban on European meat, which the U.S. imposed in response to the spread of foot-and-mouth disease from Britain to France, extends to Danish pork ribs as well. Nobody knows how long the ban will last, but many American restaurants expect their current supplies of Danish ribs to last them only four to six weeks.

As a result, phones are ringing nonstop in the offices of American pork suppliers. "We're getting desperation calls," says Bo Manly, president of Premium Standard Farms Inc., Kansas City, Mo.

If the ban lasts more than a couple of months, it isn't clear whether U.S. producers can fill the additional demand. Other pig parts are plentiful and relatively cheap these days. But each animal produces only two slabs of baby back ribs -- which, despite their name, come from adult pigs. And the Danes send the bulk of their supply to America. Ribs accounted for $100 million of the $191 million of pork the U.S. imported from Denmark last year.

Price Increases

Already, U.S. meatpackers are responding with price increases. Last week, they raised wholesale prices of their baby back ribs by between a quarter and two-thirds, to as much as $5 a pound from $3 a week ago. In a matter of days, that rise could translate into higher menu prices.

The meatpackers see the possibility of a longer-lasting benefit from Denmark's misfortune -- increased market share. "This is a great opportunity" for the U.S. producer, says Roger Johnson, director of pork quality at Triumph Pork Group, Kansas City.

But the Danes didn't succeed in this market by accident, says Steve Meyer, an economist at the National Pork Producers Council, a Des Moines, Iowa-based trade group that promotes American pork. They are "tough competition," he says. "They are just really good at raising pigs."

Indeed, many restaurateurs call U.S. pork ribs a poor substitute. "Danish ribs are more tender, and they are just a superior product," says Sean Brown, kitchen manager at a Houston's restaurant in Los Angeles, where customers order between 60 and 70 plates of ribs per night on weekdays and 100 or so per night on weekends. Mr. Brown expects to run out in a month.

The Danish variety is offered at big restaurant chains such as Outback Steakhouse Inc., T.G.I. Friday's and Chili's, a unit of Brinker International Inc. Baby back ribs account for 5% of the entree orders at Outback, which says it has only about an eight-week supply on hand for its 673 outlets nationwide. The ribs also are the star of a Chili's TV ads, which features the jingle: "I want my baby back, baby back, baby back ... ." The chains all are scrambling to avoid any supply interruptions.

Denmark, one of the world's three biggest pork exporters, behind Canada but neck-and-neck for No. 2 with the U.S., developed the baby back rib about two decades ago. That's when the Danes, eager to crack the lucrative Japanese market, came up with a boneless cut of pork loin. The product proved tremendously popular in Japan. But what to do with the bones? In most countries, they were regarded as little better than trash.

Barbecue Culture

In America, however, pork ribs were one of the staples of barbecue culture. Called spare ribs, they consisted of 15% to 20% fat, compared with 5% for other pork cuts. For their new variety of spare bones, the Danes coined the name baby back ribs. And they pitched the bones, and the succulent meat that clings to them, to Americans as a new type of pork rib.

The product was an instant hit, both as an appetizer and an entree. Unlike the spare rib, which enjoys a primarily male following, baby back ribs also proved popular with women. American restaurants, which buy ribs by the pound and sell them by the rib, loved them, too, in part because of their smaller size. Since they offered more ribs per pound than conventional spare ribs, baby backs made for fatter profits.

It took American meatpackers about 10 years to catch on and launch their own baby back ribs. But the bones in the U.S. versions are still a little bigger than the Danish variety -- around six inches long vs. about four inches -- because U.S. hogs tend to be larger. An American hog typically is slaughtered when it reaches 260 or so pounds, about 15 pounds more than the weight of a mature Danish hog.

'Meatier and Tastier'

Others insist the difference isn't just size. Marc Digiovanni, the manager of J.B. Dawson's Restaurant in Langhorne, Pa., says he would feel compelled to notify his customers if he changed over to U.S. ribs. Danish ribs are "meatier and tastier than American," he says. "Our ribs are one of our biggest sellers. We don't want to offend those attached to our current recipe."

Danish officials aren't sitting still. Not a single case of foot-and-mouth disease has been recorded in Denmark. The disease, harmless to humans, is highly contagious and can be fatal to animals, so U.S. officials are taking no chances. But on Friday, Danish representatives met with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to give a report on how Denmark is keeping foot-and-mouth disease out of the country. "It's a big problem if this goes on for very long," says Jorgen Mollegaard, a minister counselor for agriculture at the Danish Embassy in Washington.

Mr. Mollegaard says the ban has hurt Denmark not only because America is its fourth-largest market, but because other countries have followed the U.S. lead and banned meat imports from Denmark and elsewhere in the European Union. He says that it takes three weeks to ship meat from Denmark to the U.S., so if the disease turned up in Denmark, there would be plenty of time to stop the shipment.

The National Restaurant Association, a trade group based in Washington, D.C., also met with U.S. agriculture officials last week and strongly urged that Denmark be the first country they check for the disease, so that imports can start flowing again. However, the ban will definitely last until near the end of the month and is expected to continue well into April.

Write to Devon Spurgeon at devon.spurgeon@wsj.com, Jill Carroll at jill.carroll@wsj.com and Scott Kilman at scott.kilman@wsj.com