Cheese Article

There's a cheese article in the New York Times that's I found thought-provoking.

Basically, there's a French company making very good tasting Camembert cheeses from pasteurized milk. They've optimized their process to produce cheese that meets US requirements while still tasting very good.

There's reasons why a number of consumers might reject the French stuff: it isn't locally-produced, it isn't organic and it is made from pasteurized milk. Nevertheless, it wouldn't surprise me if the French stuff tastes better than some Camembert that is locally-produced, organic or made from raw milk - because the French producer, Mr. Mons, decided that he wanted to produce something that tastes good.

Wooly Pigs has made similar choices - as a result, our pork tastes incomparably better than other options. Just raising pigs with Mangalitsa genetics gives us a huge advantage, which we compound with other techniques.

Wooly Pigs has chosen to produce the best tasting pork it can and make it available at a reasonable price. At this time, given our scale of production, that requires killing batches of pigs, cutting them and freezing them. In the future - when we produce many more pigs - it may be possible to avoid the freezing.

There is some resistance from some chefs (in some parts of the USA) that, for instance, "don't buy frozen meat" or insist on "buying locally" (where they've got some standard for that) or "buying certified organic" - but like Mr. Mons, the cheese producer mentioned in the article, we've had to make compromises.

A number of very respected restaurants - some with Michelin stars - have decided that Wooly Pigs brand Mangalitsa is the stuff they want to buy and serve. They could serve cheaper, never-frozen, locally-produced pork, but they choose not to, because it doesn't taste as good.