Saturday, August 8, 2009

Pig and Processing News

I saw these articles today. They are instances of trends I've seen and written about before:
A few thoughts:

Once people start with the chickens, it is only natural to add dairy goats or pigs. Pigs are a lot more fun to have around than chickens.

People who make their own cured products at home typically want to work with good raw materials, because there's little point to investing so much labor in producing cured products roughly equivalent to those a deli can provide. Wooly Pigs has many satisfied customers who can attest to the quality of our raw materials for cured products - The French Laundry and The Herbfarm - two of the USA's most-esteemed restaurants spring to mind.

There's a general trend where developing countries get richer, want to eat more meat and then import genetics and pig-raising systems from countries like Denmark and the USA. This may lead to some ancient pig breeds disappearing. The country-specific breed preservation organizations (e.g. the ALBC) aren't up to the task of preserving the at-risk genetics of other countries.

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