LONDON — The love of red meat was once so much a part of the national makeup of the English that the French called them "les rosbifs." The 18th-century painter William Hogarth titled a famous canvas portraying the quintessential robustness of his countrymen "O the Roast Beef of Old England."
A well-marbled rib was the symbol of British well being and power, but eating habits have moved on. With rampant disease striking British herds for the second time in a decade, the change is accelerating.
"We've had a huge increase in phone calls and 14,000 hits a day on our Web site from people asking for information on balancing diet and going vegetarian," said Samantha Calvert, director of public affairs for the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom. "There was a poll that said that 32 percent of respondents would consider not eating meat, and that's a very good day for vegetarianism."
The British are shunning beef even though the malady now afflicting their animals — foot-and-mouth disease — does not harm people who eat infected meat.
People are reacting to the vast coverage in newspapers and on television that has focused on heaps of carcasses being incinerated and on affecting images of farmers grieving over the animals being sacrificed in the mass cull now under way to stem the spread of the highly contagious virus.
The images have also engaged the traditional British concern for animal welfare. "Lots of people are finally making the connection between that neat slice of red meat in the polystyrene wrapping that they buy in the supermarket and that fluffy little lamb being held by the crying farmer on TV," Calvert said.
The Ministry of Agriculture reported Saturday that the cull had now marked 832,000 animals for slaughter and that the number of confirmed cases had risen by 50 more in the past day to reach a total of 841 in the six-week-old epidemic.
Contrary to its old reputation, Britain was the most vegetarian country in Europe even before the outbreaks of disease. Calvert said a study in June estimated that 5.4 percent of people in Britain were vegetarians, and new surveys in March raised the estimate as high as 12 percent — a level that might not be sustained once the crisis has passed.
Vegetarianism tends to be an urban phenomenon, and Britain's rural population is down to 10 percent, the lowest in Europe, according to a new MORI poll. Its farming community is also smaller and less politically powerful than those on the Continent.