Mangalitsa and Wild Boar

Recently a customer was asking how similar Mangalitsa is to the wild boar she had in Italy. The standard answer is that Mangalitsa is tasty like wild boar, but a lot more marbled and fatty.

Of the domesticated pig breeds, the Mangalitsa closely resemble wild boar in many important aspects:

• Small litters
• Good mothering by the sows
• Slow growth
• Hardiness, disease resistance
• Foraging ability
• Tolerate awful weather

Most domesticated pigs, in contrast:

• Have big litters
• Have bad mothering traits
• Grow quickly
• Need a lot of vaccinations and other meds to thrive
• Can't forage well
• Don't tolerate extreme weather well

The USDA's APHIS has a very informative page on wild boar. They concentrate a lot on the danger to our agriculture (instead of the wild boar's meat quality), because it is their job to protect the USA's agriculture from disease and similar threats:

"Hunters, farmers, and landowners should be aware that wild pigs can harbor infectious diseases and can destroy crops, livestock pastures, native plants, and wildlife habitat. Moving wild pigs to new areas or allowing them onto farms that have domestic pigs can have disastrous consequences"

Some people think wild boar are responsible for e. coli contamination in one farm's spinach that killed a few people and sickened 200. Part of the article reminds me of what it is like to keep pigs:

"There is lots of evidence for pigs damaging fenced off areas ... rooting, knocking fences down,''

Pigs love to attack the fence. They'll do it even when there isn't acres of tasty spinach on the other side.

Given the similarities between Mangalitsa and wild boar, I decided to see what the library had on wild boar. So I picked up a neat book for kids called "Wild Boars" by Darrel Nicholson. Here's the cover:

The book has plenty of pictures showing wild boar piglets. They look a lot like Mangalitsa piglets and Mangalitsa-Berkshire piglets. Here are a few of the photos:

Wild Boar sow with piglets

Here's a closeups of wild boar piglets, looking a lot like our Mangalitsa-Berkshire piglets:

Wild Boar Piglets

The Mangalitsa sow also patiently nurses her piglets as they get big and annoying, like this sow:

One thing I like about the book is that it mentions how much pigs love to eat meat. Here you can see the piglets having a feeding frenzy:


It is hard to imagine what this is like, unless you've seen it up close. Below are some videos of Mangalitsa piglets feeding.

I think it is funny when a pig gets a mouthful of food and he tries to run away from the other pigs so he can eat his food without other pigs stealing it:











Another thing the book gets into is how terribly destructive the pigs are. I mentioned this a bit here, but in this next photo, you can see that the sow has done a lot of destructive rooting. She and her piglets are having wonderful family time ripping up the ground together.


One thing we noticed about our Mangalitsa pigs last winter was how much foraging they did. Just like the wild boar in the photo below, they kept busy, even in cold weather.

I feel sorry for the tree.

There is a nice mention of them eating animals that didn't survive the winter, and eating those animals too sluggish to get away. I'd never considered that before, but it makes sense. Those hibernating snakes don't have a chance.

Although the voracious nature of pigs seems terrible, their willingness to eat nearly anything and turn it into pork is why humans get along so well with pigs. For centuries, we've been feeding them stuff that would otherwise go to waste.

The book closes with a very cute photo and some text about how it is the humans that brought them:


Since the book came out, things have changed. Wild boar are increasing their range throughout the USA:


It is awful that the pigs are in the Midwest, where many commercial farms are. The wild boar will likely spread diseases to the domesticated pigs, causing huge losses. The problem has to do with wild boar being so disease resistant: they act as reservoirs for serious diseases.

The spread of wild boar to Upper Peninsula (MI) is hard to explain by gradual movement of the pigs. It could be that humans captured them and released them, for hunting, just as De Soto did.

Iberico Extensive Systems, Pig Spaying, Etc.

Red Mountain Farm's Mangalitsa live the natural lifestyle

One interesting issue that can come up when folks like Red Mountain Farm run their Mangalitsa outside is unwanted contact with wild boar. For Red Mountain Farm, this isn't an issue: their Mangalitsa and Mangalitsa x Berkshire hogs are barrows (castrated males).

Anyone that puts a cycling female outdoors in an area with wild hogs has a problem. A wild boar will do what boars do best: he'll break in, fight off any other domestic boars (potentially killing them) and service his favorite females. The males have been naturally selected to do this - it is their only job.

All the females have been bred, so it's OK to relax.

I have yet to talk to anyone whose own domestic boars have won against a wild boar interloper. The wild boar are faster, tougher and meaner. Their small size doesn't matter; one lucky shot with their tusks and that's it. In the wild, the winning boar gets to service many females, potentially producing hundreds of descendants a season. The loser may not get to procreate at all. Natural selection ensures tha the average wild boar can defeat a commercial boar, who has been selected for carcass traits.

Unwanted breeding of domestic swine with wild boar has terrible consequences for the producer:

• Wild boar transmit diseases to the domestic swine. That's always bad, no matter the disease. Depending on how serious the disease is, you may have to depopulate (kill all mammals on your farm), or institute permanent changes to manage a disease that you can't eradicate.
  

• A bred market female is worth less than an open one. She also wastes energy producing a litter of pigs. Even if you have her farrow the pigs, they won't have carcasses like your other pigs.
  

In the old days, pigs spent most of their time outside, in remote places with constant access to wild boar. Some pigs still live that way in Livermore, CA. In contrast, almost all other domestic hogs are kept separate from wild animals, which reduces the transmission of disease and completely stops uncontrolled mating.

The Spanish who finish some Iberian hogs the old-fashoned way solve this problem the old-fashioned way: they spay the females. Neutering a female is trickier than neutering a male - you have to dig around in her insides. Here's a (gory) set of photos showing how it is done in a modern setting.

I find the Spanish production methods fascinating; some details are natural (hogs foraging outside), but due to the presence of natural things (wild boar) and a desire to preserve the environment, they are forced to confine and mutilate the animals more than modern producers who arguably do things less naturally. In order to economically produce acorn-fattened hogs, as described in the case study, the Iberico bellota producers:

• keep the hogs indoors for 9-12 months. Confining the hogs takes the pressure off the landscape and allows it to recover. It is cheaper too. The hogs aren't, as many assume, roaming free their entire long life.
  

• neuter the females
  

• ring the market hogs, which prevents them from rooting up the oak savanna.
  

Another thing Iberico producers do is use a lot of antibiotics. As a Spanish guy in the business explained to me, part of Spain's culture is to liberally medicate people (and pigs). With pigs, you even treat animals at risk of becoming sick, takes you out of the premium "no-antibiotics" category (and keeps you out of markets like Whole Foods). Spain doesn't have that market segment at all.

Although the farm in that case study farrows outside (with high piglet mortality), other Iberico producers use things like farrowing crates and gestation crates - things that, in addition to the antibiotics, prevent the meat from ever being sold in Whole Foods. You name it: Albertsons, 7-11 and your mom and pop grocery will sell Fermin's product before Whole Foods.

Using farrowing crates and gestation crates is at odds with how Iberico production was done in the past. The innovations are controversial. Things are such that now, if you choose their iberico bellota, you choose taste and sustainability over:

• minimal mutilation
  
• minimal confinement
• maximal natural behaviors
• no-hormones, no-antibiotics
• high piglet survivability (via farrowing crates)

The farrowing crate issue is very interesting. The goal of crates is to prevent sows from crushing pigs - a major cause of death in any pig operation. The pro-welfare argument of crates takes the view of the piglets, saying it is better for their mom to be confined a bit so that less of them get crushed to death.

Although many Iberico sows farrow in huts, some farrow in crates, like the one pictured just below. Some even use gestation crates too, which means a sow is confined her whole life (which consists alternately of gestation and farrowing, gestation being longer).

It is hard to see how a farm can use gestation crates and not be called a factory farm. If Iberico ever becomes associated with gestation crates, I think they are in big trouble.

Iberico Sow in a Farrowing Crate

I've read plenty of remarks like:

Unfortunately, heritage pork breeds are not suited for the intensive farming techniques being used nowadays, and some of the older breeds are in danger of being lost forever.

Iberico Sows in Gestation Crates

Unfortunately (for the ones that get put into gestation crates), heritage breeds like the Iberico can be raised intensively. The producer who built the confinement facility for Iberico pictured above did it because it is possible and it pays. As a result of it being possible to produce Iberico reasonably economicaly (due to innovations like crates), the breed has steadily increasing numbers.

The Iberico was never in trouble because it works well extensively; it was in trouble because people wanted cheap, lean pork, which the Iberico doesn't produce.

Seeing the Iberico sows in crates shocked me. Until I did some research, I'd figured it wasn't done.

Feral hogs aren't ringed, so they naturally destroy things.

Back to spaying: I find it fascinating that such an involved procedure was once very common. If you go far enough back in time, you can read about sow-gelders (professional pig spayers):

22 August 1730 We hear that at the late Assizes held at Bridgwater, an indictment was preferred against a sow-gelder, for attempting to spay his wife; but she refused to prosecute, and acknowledged her forgiveness of him, and desired the Court would do the same: However, the Court remanded him back to prison, and, for the sake of the good women in general, ordered him to remain there till he could give 400l. security for his good behaviour during life...

While looking for information on sow gelding, I found a modern day sow-gelder. Here are photos (gory) showing a guy spaying a female pig in Vietnam.

Sow from 1904

I don't know why they spay them in Vietnam, but I suspect it has to do with them thinking the way we thought back in 1910. E.g. "Swine in America" from 1910 says:

Open sows running with other stock hogs are a source of great annoyance and where more than two or three are kept there is scarcely a time when some of their number are not in heat and continually chasing the others thus keeping them in a worried fevered condition extremely prejudicial to growth or fattening. If all are properly sprayed this is avoided the hogs are quiet and restful and much time annoyance and feed are saved.

All feeders agree that no animals in the swine herd feed more kindly and profitably than spayed sows and there are no buyers who would not as soon or sooner have them than barrows when they would not buy a lot of open sows at any price. An open sow when fat of the same dimensions externally as a spayed sow or a barrow generally weighs from ten to 20 pounds less.

To the feeder the buyer or the butcher unspaycd sows are usually in one way or another a cheat as they may weigh more than they are worth from having a litter of pigs in them or may be utterly destitute of inside fat from having recently suckled pigs; in either case they are of less value than their appearance would indicate. Spayed sows are not troublesome to their mates are as good as they look for feeding or marketing and command in all markets such prices as are paid for none but first class stock.

Wild Boar Videos

Mangalitsa Bacon by Barnaby Dorfman

The Mangalitsa is related closely to wild boar, although they are very different. Wild boar have leaner carcasses and are less tame.

For instance, here's some wild boar belly, from Marx Foods. It is obviously a much leaner cut than that belly above:
I was looking on the internet for things related to wild boar and I found this recent news from Germany - a bunch of wild boar went into Augsburg and only one made it out alive. The fact that they panicked made things a lot worse.

I also found some amazing videos on a site (brutalboarcreations.com) that breeds trophy boars. Some people want to shoot a wild boar so they can have a trophy. The breeders of wild boar usually breed them for size and tusk length - the things that people want in a trophy. I've posted about another company that does the same thing.

They've got some neat videos! Here's one, showing one of their giant boars pestering a sow.

This boar starts the video by stamping his feet - something boars do when bothered:

Wild boar Kong stamping his feet

They've got all sorts of videos, including ones showing cute piglets here.

I know a guy who'll be breeding wild boar to Meishan pigs, following in the footsteps of King Wilhelm I.

John Scharffenberger, Pig Enthusiast

There's an article in "INC" magazine about John Scharffenberger raising some pigs, attempting to create nice hams.

Rather than deciding to study how the Spanish go about doing what they do and then emulate them, he decided to do some experiments with feral and feral hybrids.

Here are quotes from the article, with my comments:

When the Magruders arrived, Scharffenberger took out of his refrigerator the three hams that we would be comparing. One was a supermarket-bought Spanish serrano, purchased as a stand-in for its more august cousin, because ibérico is just beginning, on a very limited basis, to be available in this country. (Classic ibérico is made from a variety of pig that dates back to Roman times and has grazed in pastures on acorns. Serrano is cured in a similar fashion to ibérico, but with meat from a less distinguished breed of pig that has been fed a conventional diet of grain.)

How Iberico are raised.

Actually, most Ibérico is a 75% iberico, 25% Duroc cross. Much of it is raised intensively (aka "industrially"). The ones that eat acorns typically eat them for about 3 months of their long lives, having spent most of their lives growing up indoors. Serrano products can be made from pigs of any breed, including the Mangalitsa, a breed that is tastier than most Ibérico breeds.

Magruder had trapped wild pigs in the area and then bred them, selecting for long snouts, long legs, and high bodies. That is the look of the classic black Iberian pig, and, indeed, Scharffenberger argues that the forebears of these wild pigs were brought to California by the early Spanish settlers. After breeding two wild sows that conformed to the desired Iberian profile, he had fed acorns to their offspring for four months before the slaughter.

The modern Iberian Black looks quite different than a wild boar. They don't have long legs or high bodies. Here's photos of two different modern Iberian Black varieties. First, the best tasting, and second, the most common:

Lampino - best tasting.

The typical hog marketed as "Iberico"

None of those look like the pigs Scharffenberger is fond of. I'm thinking he's after the half feral breeds that proceeded the Mangalitsa and Iberian Black:
Those are really old-school. They'd be hard to raise in any modern setting, explaining why pork producers phased them out in the 1800s.

INC Magazine: We tried some of the small remaining sample of his second batch, from pigs that had eaten a diet of roughly half acorns and the rest grain, fruit, and whey. "It tastes a little cheesy," Scharffenberger said. But we all liked it. Then we turned to his third batch, the most recent. Although it had not had time to age enough and the texture was a little tough, the flavor was rich and earthy, in the manner of a true ibérico. Both trial hams were far tastier than the supermarket serrano.

This doesn't surprise me. I've had Iberico in Europe, wild boar prosciutto (Italy) and imported Iberico. - and I preferred them in that respective order. As I preferred wild boar prosciutto from Italy to imported Iberico, I can easily imagine acorn-fed wild boar prosciutto beating imported serrano.

This was his second year as a part-time pig farmer. He was raising about 100 pigs, trying out crosses between the wild ones he had captured and two heirloom varieties ...

I hope they quarantined and tested their feral pigs for diseases. Feral swine often carry reportable diseases, which are economically ruinous to anyone unlucky enough to have animals with them.

"Factory Farm" of the 1800s

INC: But the critical challenge was the time needed to raise the slower-growing wild pigs. That was the main reason Magruder was hybridizing them with domestic breeds...Because it was impossible to compete on price with factory farms, he and Scharffenberger needed to emphasize the superior flavor, romantic origins, and old-fashioned livestock-raising techniques of their product.

Mangalitsa and Iberico are successfully produced on "factory farms". They are cheaper (per pound of pork) and taste better than pigs like Scharffenberger's - explaining why the Hungarians and Spanish bred them into existence, from the half-wild pigs that Scharffenberger favors.

Iberico production starts with intensive farrowing.

INC: "My plan, just like the early days of the chocolate business, is to approve a production model," he said. "And then to see what would happen with a very limited commercialization...The acorns, the historic Spanish breed, the traditional curing: He knew that a good story would get customers (and people like me) interested. But if he wanted to keep them coming back, he would have to concoct a product that was reliable, affordable, and -- most important of all -- delicious.

Spanish producers have already constructed a production system that producers 2 million head of super-premium lard-type hogs a year. Scharffenberger seems to want to produce products like them, but he's using very different methods. The European lard-type sector is a mature industry with economies of scale that produces excellent food efficiently. I expect that if Scharffenberger continues working with pigs, he'll move closer and closer to that proven system.

Housing Pigs - The Welfare Debate

There's a video from Australian Pork that covers the main issues of the sow housing debate. It is the most evenhanded video I've seen on the topic of intensive housing of sows:



Sow stalls (aka "gestation crates") look awful, but the people who use them claim that they are the best alternative. The video includes some nasty fights between sows in group housing - showing one of the main problems that sow stalls solve.

This next video is really over the top. The animal scientists unqualified support of crates is off-putting:



He makes the claim that most pigs don't want to roam; in the wild, they roam because they have to, for food.

In general, he's probably right that most domesticated pigs don't care to be that active - because they've been selected for living in confinement. There are differences between breeds. Just as herding dogs are generally more active than companion dogs, some pig breeds are lazier than others.

Humans are responsible for these changes in animals. E.g. the Mangalitsa was formed from half-wild breeds of pigs that were quick to bite. The progenitors of the Mangalitsa were like feral pigs. Just as humans transformed wild dogs into fairly tame ones, humans have (over thousands of years) transformed wild pigs into extremely lazy, profligate and tame pigs.

In contrast wild boar are active and generally don't do well around people or in tight quarters.

Wild boar on farm. High fence for short pigs.

I recently talked with a guy who breeds wild boar. They had to cull a number of them to build a herd that could work in their system. They needed to raise them indoors in order to avoid catastrophic winter farrowing losses, but that meant making their farm work for wild animals, and culling the animals that were still "too wild" for the farm. After a few years, they've got a herd that works for their farm, which breaks out the life cycle into a typical multi-site system, allowing them to keep the pigs healthy easier.

Domesticated pigs stay put behind a flimsy fence.

It bothers some people that we've repeatedly taken independent, active animals like pigs and turned them into lazy, dependent animals that require expensive equipment. Some people think it is wrong for humans to produce animals that can't fend for themselves. Others (the folks who raise animals intensively) can argue that the people who raise pigs extensively are indifferent to the extra mortality associated with those systems.

I think most people who have opinions about how animals are raised would be shocked to hear that intensive farmers can logically argue that they are better animal stewards than traditional farmers.

Of course, it is only the amazing success of our ancestors domesticating plants and animals is what allows us the luxury of reflecting on these philosophical issues, instead of filling our time with constant hunting, gathering and whatever else people did in the Stone Age.

It isn't clear how we humans should decide what transformations of our animals are forbidden or not. E.g. Meishan pigs seem pretty nice and happy, as long as you don't make them move around much. I don't think it is wrong that humans have bred them that way. In general, it is good if we match the animals to our keeping systems, and vice versa.

Franz and I Got Mentioned

Leslie Kelly mentioned Franz and me in the Seattle Post Intelligencer - along with the restaurants that just got their heavy Berkshire hogs this morning.

The article is about "wild boar" appearing in restaurants. I suspect it is popular because it is so different from normal pork. That reminds me of the feedback I got from Executive Sous Chef Devin Knell of the French Laundry, about the Mangalitsa - the fat and flavor is amazing.

Franz, pictured above, looks a lot like a wild boar. That's not surprising - the Mangalitsa breed is derived from Europe's wild boar, without any improvement from Asian pig breeds. A key difference between Mangalitsa and wild boar is that Mangalitsa are bigger and easier to manage - that's why the Hungarian breeders went through all that trouble hundreds of years ago.

Here's a nice photo of European Wild Boar (note how feminine the sow is, and how masculine the boar):


You can see the connection in the piglets. Unlike most pig breeds, Mangalitsa piglets have stripes. That's like wild boar:


Here are some wild boar piglets, for comparison:

Wild Boars, Breed Preservation

Wild boar are a huge problem in Germany, as in America. Recently a hunter got killed by one. The article mentions that with the increased planting of corn (due to its high price), there's more fodder for wild boar, so they are undergoing a population explosion.

In America, a guy is on trial for being the "Johnny Appleseed" of feral hogs in Minnesota - although farmers there probably think of him as a biological terrorist. He's already blamed for the appearance of wild boar in tens of counties (with the associated crop destruction) and two pseudorabies outbreaks in domestic swine herds. Pseudorabies is absolutely awful for the owners of those herds; if the government finds out that you've got pseudorabies in your herd, they put them all down.

That brings up another interesting issue: a lot of people who keep rare breeds of pigs raise them outdoors, where they can catch diseases from wild hogs, badgers and other wild animals. In some cases, this has been disastrous. E.g. you've got a GOS producer who lost his herd due to bovine TB, which they caught from being outdoors. On a bigger scale, Spanish farmers have had to kill large numbers of Iberico due to diseases like Classical Swine Fever. Now that they raise them indoors more and more, that's less of a problem.

One argument says that if your goal is to preserve rare breeds, you should be wiling to do use technology to do it. E.g. raise them indoors away from wild animals, and use modern techniques like hormones and embryo transfer to increase their numbers - and even use techniques like cloning or gene modification. I don't think that most people who say they are in favor of breed preservation are aware of what breed preservation really entails.

'Naturally raised' - an Unfortunate Standard

Photo by Sharkey

There's an article in the Capital Press about different interest groups arguing over what the legal definition of "naturally raised" ought to mean.

I have written on this topic before. My view is that humans raising animals or plants for human consumption is fundamentally unnatural. Natural is hunting and gathering. Agriculture is necessarily humans imposing our will on plants and animals. Domesticated animals, themselves, are the physical manifestation of humans turning wild animals into something very different. Even humans stocking rivers with "wild salmon", or game parks with "wild boar" is unnatural - and those fish or wild boar, once caught, are hardly "natural"; their very existence is unnatural.

I'm with the Consumers Union, which "argued that the term naturally raised was ambiguous and that the AMS should simply certify livestock and poultry as being produced without growth promoters, antibiotics and animal byproducts."

I don't like standards like the "naturally raised" one, because they create incentives for producers to withhold treatment from sick animals - because once treated with antibiotics, the animals have to be sold at a discount. I'm not speaking theoretically: I've talked with people selling pork with those characteristics, and they've confirmed this.

For me, the most entertaining aspect of that article is:

In contrast, the National Pork Board characterized the program as setting artificial limits on pork production, since pigs are naturally omnivorous, eating meat and plants.

"Excluding feed ingredients such as dried blood plasma and meat and bone meal from use in a naturally raised standard is not consistent with the diet of pigs that are in their totally natural, wild environment," according to a letter from the National Pork Board.

A little too natural for some.

That's absolutely true. Pigs, wild and domestic, love animal protein.

When people kept and slaughtered their own pigs, they understood this a lot better. E.g. when you stick a pig, some blood spills on the ground. You pull that pig out to dehair it and the other pigs run over to lick up the blood. When you are all done, you take the inedible pig bits - e.g. the trachea - boil it and feed it to the pigs. They love it! And the pigs turn it into pork or fertilizer, which is better than rotting animal protein.

For most people, the reality of pigs is just too much. Hence, the NPB chose to say "naturally omnivorous" instead of "naturally cannibalistic".

People who know pigs know that the current "naturally raised" standard is unnatural and irrational. As I have explained before, "Certified Humane Raised and Handled" is likewise unnatural and irrational.

Wild Salmon and Iberico Production Innovations

"Wild salmon" start here.

In a recent post, I explored some of the details of modern iberico production. Not surprisingly, as demand for iberico products has soared, there's been an economic incentive to produce as much iberico as possible. Producers have responded by using a variety of innovations, some controversial. As described in this article:

The extensive pig production in Spain is traditionally characterised by: the use of the Iberian pig, an autochthonous breed perfectly integrated into the environment in which they have developed; a long duration of the productive cycle for about 23–24 months; a high level of animal welfare level, specially in the fattening process with freedom of movement and feeding base on natural sources: acorns and grass, and an equilibrated “dehesa” agro-forestry system where this activity has been developed. Nowadays, the introduction of more intensificated methods due to the increasing demand led to important changes, such as: the shortening of the productive cycle (10–12 months); freeing from the territorial base; changes during the fattening period, fattening with mixed feed and less animal freedom. All these facts may implicate a loss of the animal welfare condition. These circumstances lead us to question it from an ethical point of view.

A key limiting factor is the efficiency of the Iberian sows at weaning pigs. The obvious response is to run a hybrid system: run the breeding stock with modern methods and get the most Iberian pigs on the ground, then finish them with more or less traditional methods that bring a high price.

The methods designed to produce the most weaned pigs seem to be in conflict with the free-range finishing that some of them experience*, but it is a direct consequence of pig biology and consumer demand.

The same thing has happened with "wild salmon".

The best salmon is wild salmon. It tastes the best and costs much more than farmed salmon. But - and this isn't well known - a lot of those "wild salmon" start their lives in fish hatcheries. After they are mature and ready to go out in the world (an analogous stage for the pig would be a started pig), they enter a more tradtional production system (the ocean, for Iberian swine, the Dehesa).

The more you look at it, the more sense it makes. With both salmon and Iberico, there's the potential to produce many offspring in a generation, but in the wild (or primitive production systems), a good fraction of them aren't going to make it.

Whether or not it is ultimately good or bad that people use these innovations, it is clear that they allow us to produce a lot more super-premium food without losing on quality. A lot of innovation in food (e.g. TV dinners) is anti-quality, but the ones that impact reproduction efficiency aren't.

The contrast between how the animals start out (controlled environment geared to maximum production) versus how they wind up is so surprising. If you saw only the start or the finish, you'd never guess what was going on.

* There are too many Iberico hogs each year to finish them free-range.

Bias Against Woolly Pigs

Our modern breeds of pigs have less hair and finer hair than in the past.

In an old guide to the Berkshire breed, it says, "A woolly pig is not at all desirable."



How hairy pigs are and their meat quality is independent. For example, Mangalitsa pigs, which are very hairy, and Negro Lampino pigs taste similar. The Lampino has very little hair.

Hairs are relatively easily removed by scalding. Why the bias against hair?

My guess is that people just prefer pretty & delicate looking animals. Wild animals don't look nice.

Which of the following pigs would you trust:

wild boar

or this pig:

F1 Mangalitsa x Meishan

If I saw the first one, I'd try to get away from it. It just looks too mean and dangerous. The second one looks like something you could push around.

In the old days, the common breeds looked a lot like the wild boar:



Eventually those pigs were improved via Chinese breeds like the Meishan. Those breeds have fine hair, and very little of it:

Meishan boar getting an injection

The Chinese bred their local wild boars into pigs resembling the Meishan: pug-nosed, fat-prone pigs with fine hair. The Meishan comes from a hot climate, but even so, its hair is particularly fine and sparse:

Meishan pigs

When pigs like the Meishan were introduced to Europe in the 1700s, Europeans crossed them with their traditional breeds. The resulting crosses tasted better, produced more pigs per litter. They had more hair than the Meishans, but in general, they looked a lot more refined than the half-wild breeds of Europe. Here's a F1 Mangalitsa x Meishan cross. It looks a lot like a typical domesticated pig, despite its sire being ridiculously bristly in comparison:

F1 Mangalitsa x Meishan aka "Wu-Tang Pig"

Why is the Meishan (the pigs next to the human) so odd-looking? The answer is that it has been the most selected by humans. Chinese had thousands of years to breed their wild pigs into something they liked having around. Lazy, big-headed, docile, pug-nosed pigs are what they like.

Back in the 1700s, if you were in Europe and saw a pig with fine hair, you knew it has to be the product of a lot of breeding, and hence probably better for pork production.

It is easy to see how the bristly hogs would go extinct, even if they produced as efficiently as the non-bristly hogs. All it takes is people "playing it safe" for that to happen.


Why all this Matters

In order to produce high-quality 100% lard-type pigs, we have crossbred Mangalitsa pigs with Meishans. The F1s look a lot like domesticated pigs.

We've taken F1 Mangalitsa x Meishan gilts and bred them back to Mangalitsa boars, producing Mangalitsa x (Mangalitsa x Meishan) pigs. They look a lot like the F1s, despite having 75% Mangalitsa genetics. It is an amazing phenomenon. One wonders how the 87.5%-12.5% Mangalitsa-Meishan crosses would look.

Despite the Mangalitsa-Meishan crosses being excellent tasting, hardy, and quick-growing, we probably won't sell many as feeder pigs. The reason is clear: our efforts the last few years have created demand for Swallow-belly Mangalitsa pigs. Even if a pig has 75% Swallow-belly Mangalitsa genetics, if it just looks like a black pig, the fact that it is more disease resistant, grows faster and so on isn't going to offset the fact that it looks like a regular pig.

Customers that want Mangalitsa pigs need Mangalitsa-looking pigs.

The Berkshire crosses (75% Mangalitsa 25% Berkshire) that we've been producing the last two years probably don't taste as good as Mangalitsa-Meishan crosses, but at least they look the part.

One of the reasons I imported the Mangalitsa pigs was not only did they taste incredible, they looked incredible. As I expected, it is fairly easy to show people a Mangalitsa pig and convince them that they taste different from regular pigs.

I think it would have been much harder to start a business built on Meishan pigs, despite them being an excellent lard-type breed, because they look too ugly, and the crosses look too much like normal pigs.

Little Water Cantina's Wild Boar Sandwich

Laura Wilkinson eating Little Water Cantina's
wild boar/Mangalitsa sandwich.

Little Water Cantina in Eastlake has a neat sandwich: wild boar (from an Oregon game farm) smoked and sauted in Mangalitsa lard. The bread is from Macrina.

Wild boar fried in Mangalitsa lard taco

They served me some.* It was great - I devoured it. I got some tortillas and a little dipping sauce and cabbage. It was nice to get cabbage instead of lettuce. It reminded me of being in Germany and getting döner kebab.

Wild boar sandwich

As mentioned on a Seattle food blog, they've got other stuff fried in Mangalitsa lard, which I've tried before. It really makes stuff tastes great.

I just delivered them a bunch of raw fat. By rendering their own lard, they'll save money, get their lard exactly how they want it and get the greaves. I advised them on how the most quality-sensitive people I know render lard.

In general, Little Water Cantina and Monsoon, both Mangalitsa customers, have the same problem: because they serve ethnic food (Mexican and Vietnamese respectively), people expect their stuff to be cheap and filling. Foodies tend to stay away from such places, even though they'd like the food if they tried it. At the same time, the customers who demand lots of rice (and rock-bottom prices) will leave feeling they didn't get enough food.


* I thought I was going to go to the opening of Eric Banh's new restaurant, so I just asked for a sample. Eric's place didn't open that night. My new rule: if someone offers me free Mangalitsa-based, eat all of it.

Lettuce and Wild Hogs

I saw this interesting news report about violent measures lettuce growers are taking to keep wild hogs and other wild animals out of the lettuce.

Vegetarians and other consumers probably imagine that eating vegetables is somehow good for wildlife - when in reality, the high margins that lettuce producers earn (particularly organic lettuce producers) motivate them to take a thorough and brutal approach to controlling wildlife incursions.

Some of the requirements imposed on the producers sound ridiculous:

Fresh Express, with 41 percent of the bagged greens market, demands a mile between farm fields and feedlots for cattle instead of the agreement's recommended 400 feet. The company also requires that a field intruded on by a wild pig be kept idle for two years.

That's such a huge penalty that you have to figure that if a guy does see a wild hog in his field, he'll claim he didn't see it.

Mangalitsa Breeding, Animal Genetic Resources of the USSR

For people interested in pigs and pig breeding, there's Animal genetic resources of the USSR. Soviet agricultural scientists constructed synthetic breeds in an attempt to meet their exact needs.

Just as the French constructed a breed for the Haitians, the Soviets constructed breeds to fit their climates. One of the breeds was based on the Mangalitsa. They called it a Mangalitskaya (it is near the bottom of the document).

Blonde Mangalitsa Boar

The history of the Mangalitsa says that the various Mangalitsa breeds were created in the 1800s by crossing half-wild pigs with lardy ones, a process somewhat similar to the Soviet process. As the Hungarians switched from running hogs completely extensively (outside) on forage to fattening them in pens on grain, they needed fatter hogs.Quoting Dr. Radnóczi Lászlo:

In period of the development of the breed the main purpose of hog keeping was to utilize the wet, swampy pastures and forests. The typical breeds of the 18th century were the "reed-hog" from the Great Hungarian Plain and the "Bakonyi" from the woods of the Transdanubian hills, whereas the voluminous, red coloured "Szalontai" was found in the eastern border of the Great Hungarian Plain. Late maturity, slow growth, poor dressing percentage and tough meet, stingy, substandard bacon were characteristic of these breeds. Their advantage was the resistance to the rigours of weather and diseases., The so called "spiny" hogs, which did not differ much from the wild boar, as they were outstanding runners and ready to bite, were the most hardy breeds in the Carpathian Mountains.

The half-wild herds walked around the forests and grazing lands all the year round, the sows farrowed in self-made nests placed in reeds and shrub bottom . Piglets constantly following the sow, grew into skinny young pigs on the poor grazing lands, spent the winter outside and by digging up scraps left on agricultural lands or by acorn mast they put on some meat and bacon, thus became suitable for slaughtering at two years old...

As a result of the wider use of maize production and the ploughing of forests and grazing lands and forming to arable area, there was a radical change in the conditions of keeping and feeding from the second half of the 18th century. In the 19th century the regulation of the river-ways accelerated this process. Due to the change of market requirements, there was a greater demand for fat and bacon of good quality and less fibrous meat.

The extensive husbandry could not cope with these conditions. The old breeds, such as Bakonyi and Szalontai were taken to the farmyards of the domains and the small owners, fed with maize and crossed with the "Sumadia" breed of Serbian origin. The constitution of the animals have gradually changed and the "fat-type" hogs were developed. Sows of the
slow growing type were mated with the "new-type" boars...

Swallow-bellied Mangalitsa Boar

The three varieties of Mangalitsa are genetically distinct, which the DNA shows, because the Hungarians first created the blonde Mangalitsa and then the red and swallow-bellied. People don't talk about it much, but the original breeds used to construct the Mangalitsa don't exist anymore, because it didn't pay to maintain them. Today's pork producers likewise abandon genetics that don't pay - explaining why besides Wooly Pig's recently imported Mangalitsa herd, there are no other commercially viable lard-type breeds in North America.

If you read about the Soviet synthetic breeds, you'll see that at times, they crossed wild boar with other existing breeds in order to produce tough, disease-resistant animals. That's not very different from the Hungarians crossing lardy hogs with their half-wild breeds, to produce tasty ones.

Red Mangalitsa boar

Later on, the Hungarians bred Duroc into the Red Mangalitsa herd. The red Mangalitsa herd grew so inbred that they had to mix in other pigs to prevent the breed from vanishing. They attempted to keep the meat and fat quality and foraging ability the same.

Blonde and Red Mangalitsa

As a result of the crossbreeding, the red Mangalitsa have more snub noses, larger testes, larger penis sheaths and blockier bodies than the other Mangalitsa. Those details aren't just curiosities; researchers study things like testis size, because it is related to reproduction.

Some people don't like the Red Mangalitsa because of the introgression. Yet due to the Hungarians selecting them for meat and fat quality, they taste like the other Mangalitsa. They didn't select the crossbred animals for their looks, but rather their superior pork, because the customer just expects a Mangalitsa to be a curly-haired hog with Mangalitsa-quality meat and fat.

One would presume that had the Hungarian breeders had access to the resources the Soviets had, the various Mangalitsa varieties might have turned out differently. There's no reason to think they would have held back; the creation of the various Mangalitsa varieties and the disappearance of the Mangalitsa's founding stock makes it clear they were pragmatic.

My own thought on this is that it is very important to conserve biodiversity. It may not be necessary to conserve breeds (we can create them if we have enough biodiversity, money and time) - but without biodiversity, there's nothing to work with.