Busted For Smuggling Meat

There's a news story about a woman getting busted bringing in meat from Mexico. Unless the meat is from a USDA-inspected slaughter and processing establishment, it can't be brought in. The story is noteworthy because they hid the sausages in "dirty" diapers.

The reason for the ban is that meat products can harbor diseases like classical swine fever. If pigs eat that chorizo, they could get sick and endanger the USA's herd. Haiti's herd had to be depopulated because of diseases brought in from Europe.

The rules seem anti-food and awful, until you consider that an outbreak of Classical Swine Fever or a similar disease would cost the USA's pork producers millions of dollars.

Pig Farms As Threats

People routinely use pig farms as retaliation in land use disputes. I saw this case today - basically, a guy fighting with his neighbor hopes to use a pig farm to stop them from doing what he doesn't want.

In another case, you've got a guy who was stopped from doing something, so he threatens to put in a pig farm to bother people.

If the pigs only knew. Not only do we control all aspects of their life cycle so that we can eat them, but we also use them to settle scores with other humans. Releasing wild boar, as one fellow was accused of (but later acquitted), would count too.

Butchering in Restaurant

There's a news story about kitchen staff getting busted for butchering a deer in their kitchen. What's odd is that very fancy restaurants - e.g. Alain Passard's L'Arpège, a restaurant with three Michelin stars, does similar things.

When I see that photo of that deer's head in a kitchen, I'm reminded that you'd never want an un-butchered hog in a kitchen. Because it would be foul on the outside, and then you'd have to get the guts out, which would only make things more foul.

Saving Haiti's Bacon, Porc Noir Gascon

Porc noir de Gascon

There's an interesting article about scientists creating a pig breed to replace the extinguished Haitian pigs. The high-input pink pigs they got from the USA weren't working out; they needed low-input, all-black pigs that could live cheaply.

They constructed the breed partially with the Porc Noir Gascon, a European breed from the Pyrenees similar to the Iberian Black and Mangalitsa. It has taken a lot of effort (translation from French) to stop them from disappearing. That breed, like the Mangalitsa (and unlike the Iberian Black), isn't well known.

Nowadays it is for very high-end products like Jambon de Porc Noir Gascon. Here's more info about the pig and the breed. It is too bad that even in France, they couldn't stop their best-tasting pigs from nearly vanishing.



They are a bit leaner than Mangalitsa. There's more photos of them here. Here's more info on the breed (in French).

10/27 - Food Articles From The New York Times

There's an article about restaurants that contract with producers to raise animals for them.

Restaurants who do that can acquire very high quality goods at very low prices, in the same way that a tailor can produce you fantastic clothes at a reasonable price. Understanding inventory risk makes it clear why this is so: a producer can't afford to spend a lot to produce a premium product that goes unsold. The rational thing to do is to produce only that which can surely be sold profitably, which reduces the risk, but also keeps the cost to the consumer high.

Some restaurants, like The Herbfarm, raise their own hogs. That not only ensures they've got the price and availability, but they can control the finishing of the hogs to get the best raw material. Because they'll be processing the pork, they want to control the finish. To that end, they are feeding the hogs things like acorns, which are high in tannins, antioxidants and monounsaturated fats.

The best Spanish producers of jamon likewise contract for very special pork - as otherwise it won't get produced at all. In contrast, almost all American processors just buy spare unwated spare parts (e.g. hams), ensuring that their raw material and end results are mediocre, regardless of what processing methods they use.

There's also an article, "A French Family Dynasty Reinvents the Oyster", about a French oyster company and the methods they use to consistently produce the best oysters:

Oysters are then trucked here to be finished and packed. They spend several weeks in oyster ponds, with water changed regularly and salinity measured carefully, before being washed and sorted by size.

It doesn't surprise me that it takes controlling chemical variables like salinity to make the best raw material; pigs are the same (but its the fat and flavor to control). You can eat Mangalitsa pigs fattened on different farms and they'll taste better or worse.

I certainly hope that when the "New York Times" writes about American Mangalitsa producers, they'll be fair and say we are reinventing the pig - because the fundamental things required to produce the best pigs aren't that different from those required to produce the best oysters.

Lucian Marcu, Butcher from Székely

Lucian Marcu - butcher from Székely

Székely (pronounced [ˈseːkɛj]) is part of Romania. The Székely people have lived there for about a thousand years. People have raised Mangalitsa pigs there, along with breeds like the Bazna, derived from Mangalitsa. Here's how they traditionally slaughter pigs there.

Lucian Marcu, pictured above, is a butcher from Székely. Amateur pig slaughter and processing is still a big deal in Hungary and Romania.

Lucian Marcu (left) scraping a pig.

If I lived in the Upper Midwest and needed pigs slaughtered, I'd call Lucian.

Swine Your Way

Mangalitsa Pigs in Hungary

There's a free book on keeping hogs from the University of Minnesota.

It covers 4 different systems:

• Swedish Deep-Straw Farrowing System
• Deep-Straw Hoop Structure System
• Pasture Production Systems
• Conventional Confinement Systems

There are other systems (e.g. Cargill Finishers), which are now considered sub-optimal compared to total confinement or hoop barns. People wouldn't typically build any of those today, but there are lots of them in place already all over America. During the period when Mangalitsa pigs were popular in Hungary, they settled on systems like this one to fatten the hogs. The hogs go outside and get fresh air. They can move around, so their muscles taste meaty. They can't run up and down hills though, so they get fat.


Here is another Hungarian farm, where they move around more. They've cleared out all small vegetation. One problem with keeping pigs on dirt is that they'll build up a parasite load (in the dirt) over time. That's not a problem with concrete.

Mangalitsa Chops

Mangalitsa

Some customers took a photo of some meat they bought and wrote about it. I really like the photo of the chop. Their description was nice:

The result was amazing. The fat melted onto the jerusalem chokes giving them a wonderfully rich, soft texture and flavor. The main event, the chops, were INCREDIBLE! The meat was totally different than any pork I’ve ever eaten, unbelievably tender with a taste closer to fresh cream than meat. The fat got crispy and had a delicate richness that coated the mouth, but wasn’t overwhelming or greasy. We didn’t need it, but the combination of the Mangalitsa with small amounts of the sherry gastrique took things to yet another level. I don’t think anyone at the table was able to form a complete sentence until halfway through the meal…a fly on the wall would heard Mmmmm..oh wow..ooooo..oh…my this is umm…

As I've mentioned before, Mangalitsa meat quality is some of the best in the world. The Mangalitsa crosses taste great too.

Mass Production, Quality and "Artisanal"

Modern Jamon Iberico factory.

I've noticed an unwarranted bias in America against mass-produced food. I suspect it is because most mass-produced American food isn't very good. Also, the best mass-produced food (e.g. jamon iberico) is marketed as if it isn't mass-produced.

All this leads to people making incorrect assumptions about the potential to produce great mass-produced food.

Most American food companies produce for the price-sensitive American consumer, not the quality-sensitive consumer. The ones that do produce for the quality-sensitive consumer (e.g. Lindt's American subsidiary) often try to hide their American status; because with products like chocolate, it is a stigma to be made in America.

Spanish Hams

When I lived in Europe, I rarely saw American food. When I went to the food section at Hertie, I'd see all sorts of non-German stuff, but very little of it was American. The few American products really stood out. One that was clearly very popular was Kraft cream cheese. I later heard plenty of Europeans talk about that cheese and how much they loved it, even though Schmelzkaese and other European cheeses are similar.

Later on I read a fascinating article about how Kraft is the dominant company in cream cheese, because they know how to make cream cheese better than all others - big, small, organic, conventional, "local", biodynamic etc. I think it is interesting that:

• There are essentially no "artisanal" cream cheese manufacturers worth talking about.

• Kraft, a gigantic food company, makes a world-class product. Because of Kraft, we can proudly say that America produces at least one cheese that the world loves - in the same way that we love Italian parmesan.

Iberico Sows in Gestation Crates

Farming processes, optimized to produce excellent tasting food, don't have to look traditional in order to beat traditional producers on eating quality. Those small producers who can't even get the basics right (e.g. breed and feed) aren't going to beat modern producers who optimize that for meat qualtiy. Iberico hogs, carefully raised in confinement, taste better than meat-type hogs - even those raised by loving small farmers practicing traditional farming.

Because producing good tasting food is about chemistry and processes, it isn't surprising that large companies can produce that stuff better than "artisans", in the same way that drug companies are better at producing medicines than home chemists. The fact that a home chemist uses "organic" techniques or "local" ingredients isn't going to necessarily make better products, and may even lead to lower quality results, by constraining the selection of inputs.

Of course, small producers can produce better results than big producers - they just need to be very good.