What is sustainable pork production? It isn't a hog raised in industrialized factory farm or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), it isn't a trend and it isn't being championed by the hypocrites like Paul Deen at the Food Network.
A vivid description of a CAFO comes from an article titled Pork's Dirty Secret by Jeff Tietz from the December 14, 2006 Rolling Stone magazine,
"Smithfield's pigs [Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world] live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens... in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment..."
Appetizing isn't it. If that didn't do it for you, check out the 83-minute film entitled “Death on a Factory Farm”. This documentary focuses on the undercover investigation of animal cruelty on an Ohio hog farm, and the court trial that followed. Be prepared, it isn't pretty.
So, What is Sustainable Pork Production?
Walk through his 250-acre parcel of hill and bottomland due east of Eugene, Oregon with Paul Atkinson and his young son Ansel, and you’ll be striding alongside a lanky man who looks like a grown-up Peter Pan with a shaggy haircut, brown eyes and shy smile. However, this man is hardly someone who’s avoided growing-up. He’s been farming since he was 19. Intense with devotion and passion for his farm, he knows his land and animals well and believes fiercely in the ideals of sustainable farming.
In 1986, Paul joined a neighbor to make goat cheese. Searching for a use for the whey left over from cheesemaking, he started raising pigs. They adored the nutritious byproduct. One thing led to another and he was soon selling suckling pigs, pigs weighing five to six pounds. A visit from Chez Panisse’s forager exploring the Northwest established his market.“ And if Alice Waters is buying from you,” Paul says, “it’s not long before you get a phone call from Charlie Trotter in Chicago or Boulet in New York.” He now raises and sells 125 pigs a year, making a profit, in part, he notes because his land is paid off.
“I’ve been pressured to increase production,” he says. “But I don’t believe changing the scale would be appropriate for the size of this place. It works as well as I can make it right now to be sustainable. For me, it’s essential to have a balance between the amount of land, the harvest it yields, the number of animals and the cost/expense ratio. I want to sell as locally as I can and raise the animals on food that’s also grown locally. If you sell locally, people have to think about who’s getting their money for food.”
Meanwhile, four plump sows are snoozing languorously on their sides in the barn. Nearby in another large pen 38 little piggies of varying sizes are snuffling contently in clean hay. His sows have litters four times a year. The challenge he notes is to get them to a reputable slaughterhouse and on to the chefs who’ve ordered them. That’s a challenge. Where there were once five small slaughterhouses in the area, he now has to drive 100 miles to the nearest one. But he has established trucking connections to take the meat to his restaurant accounts. “All I have is my good name and the consistency of my product,” he says. “I have to trust my suppliers to uphold my faith.”
Laughing Stock Farm’s sustainability model includes 600 to 700 chickens scratching and pecking on a nearby hillside in a large, moveable electrified corral. Three egg boxes under canopies are mounted on moveable trailers so the entire set-up can be moved every week to a different part of the pasture. In another moveable corral, he’s also raising heirloom turkeys.
The Latest "Thing" in Sustainable Pork Production
Enter hazelnut-fed pork, especially in the Pacific Northwest known for its picturesque hazelnut orchards. This isn't new. In Italy, some of the best Prosciutto di Parma is made from chestnut feed pigs and in Spain, Iberico ham is produced from free-range hogs that feed themselves on wild acorns. Not everyone thinks that this "trend" equals a quality product.
According to an article by Leslie Cole, from The Oregonian, "[Paul] says he's concerned about the amount of chemicals applied to hazelnuts and notes that too many nuts in a pig's diet can make the pork fat too soft and liquidy." Paul is all about community, tradition, polyculture, taste, flavor,and quality.
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