Today is Easter and I imagine a lot of people in the Christian world are eating pork today, probably in the form of ham. So, if you are eating ham or perhaps favor some other form of piggy goodness, which of the above pictures did that pig come from? The one on the left, where it spent its short five months of life living in crowded pens with slatted floors, where the stench of manure, the heat, and the high-pitched screeching noise is a fact of its miserable life? Where the tails are cut off and the eye teeth removed so they can't nibble as effectively on each others behinds, since there is nothing else to do to occupy their days. The pigs are pumped full of antimicrobials (antibiotics and other drugs) in their feed to prevent disease and enhance growth. The flavor of the pork from these animals is a cross between dry cardboard and texturized vegetable protein. But hey- at least they are lean, right? Isn't that what Americans 'need' (but probably don't want)?
Or did your ham come from the picture on the right (one of our first batches of pigs) who started out their life bred for leanness and confinement production, but were brought to our farm as wieners and encountered a completely different way of life. They were raised for six or seven months to a hearty size of 300-350 pounds live weight. They were fatty and the meat was marbled, even though they got copious quantities of exercise (which you couldn't tell by the lazy nature of their afternoon dozing in this picture, tired from all the rooting and munching they were doing). They never got sick, and never got antibiotics. They were moved frequently to new pastures to keep their parasite loads down, and their livers were the picture of health after slaughter, which is a sign of low parasite pressure. As one would expect, we get rave reviews for the taste of our pork (just see some of the Local Harvest reviews as proof). Now tell me, which ham do you prefer?
So along comes a short, preliminary study in the Journal of Foodborne Pathogens & Disease in April, 2008 and a history professor from the prestigious* Texas State University who gets a Op-Ed in the NY Times to proclaim that pigs raised outdoors are a ticking time-bomb, full of potential pathogens waiting to destroy the foodies clamoring to eat it. First off, as an ecologist and agriculturist, I wonder, what does a history professor from a no-name school in Texas have to say about a scientific study in agriculture? How does one get an Op-Ed in the NY Times without any expertise? Mmm...I must dig deeper.









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