Photo credit: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-baconbrown-sugar-pork-tenderloin-recipes-from-the-kitchn-215660
I am going to stem off into a darker side of the western diet in this post so be forewarned.
In today's world, more meat is consumed than ever before. The average American is said to consume approx. 270.7 pounds of meat per year with chicken being the highest.
credit: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/visualizing-a-nation-of-meat-eaters
Now I could spend the rest of my life trying to explain to people all of the negative repercussions from the consumption of meat. Most of what would be explained would be in relation to chronic illnesses connected to animal product consumption. These points are worth covering and will be... but for today, I am going to talk about the requirements to bring those animal products to your market.
photo credit: http://kansas.sierraclub.org/pig-confinement-technologyrisks-deadly-fires/
In the picture above you see what is known as a finishing barn full of fat hogs. These pigs are just about fully grown. I am estimating by the size in the picture and can not say exactly but I would guess these animals to be about 18-20 weeks old.
They are a little small to butcher at this point but after a couple more weeks of scientifically formulated feed you can bet they will be there. This type of operation is how your pork is raised unless you buy from a local farmer that may still allow free range. While there are still a few that do this, 99% of the pork purchased at a store is not raised that way.
When I was a young scrappy lad, I used to work in what I have more recently come to call; Hogschwitz. This may sound like a sick joke but if you look at the picture and then bare with me for a few more moments, I will elaborate. A hog confinement usually consists of a farrow to finish operation. This means that you raise the animal from point of conception all the way to slaughter. (A total life span of no more than 26 weeks) All breeding is done through artificial insemination. There is rarely any actual exposure to another animal as they live their lives in crates. Below is an example of how the sow (female hog that has reproduced) is housed after breeding. She will remain in this type of a stall until about 3 days before she is to give birth (about 3 months).
photo credit: https://www.farmsanctuary.org/learn/factory-farming/pigs-used-for-pork/
At this point the sow is moved into a farrowing crate inside a room with other sows that are all due to farrow (give birth) at around the same time. In order to keep things as systematic as possible the sows are given a powerful hormone to induce the birthing process. This allows for a more uniform group of pigs as they are all born around the same time and there for will all achieve slaughter weight at approximately the same time. Below is a picture of a sow in a farrowing crate with piglets at side. The sow will remain with her piglets for about 14-16 days and will then be weaned (seperated) from the piglets. The sows will then be returned to a breeding confinement at which point they will be impregnated again 3-5 days later. This is the life of the sow.
The pigs will then be moved to their final destination, the finishing barn... back to where we started. (sometimes there is another facility known as a nursery that houses the piglet during the transition phase) So why is it that I referred to this as Hogschwitz? At this point I hope the description and pictures have led you to understand why, but I am still going to elaborate some more.
About 2 years after I started working in hog confinement operations I experienced something that was very disturbing to me. It started inside a farrowing barn. To this day I don't think I would forget the smell if I stumbled upon it... TGE. TGE stands for transmissible gastroenteritis and is a viral disease of the small intestine effecting baby piglets. It is basically a terrible case of diarrhea caused by a virus. The problem is that it kills most babies born. What I didn't realize was how we were going to go about controlling it. My boss at the time explained to me that he would like for me to go kill as many of these newborn pigs as I could find. I was then to collect them so that we could eventually feed the pigs intestines (for inoculation) back to the sows in the gestation barn. Now I was born and raised on a farm in the Midwest so there are a lot of things that I used to just think of as a normal way of life. This did not seem like one of them. But I did what I was told to do and I remember thinking to myself that I would surely burn in hell for the deeds I was committing. This was not the first time I had felt this way in Hogshwitz and it was not the last either... unfortunately.
This is just one of hundreds of terrible things I experienced working in this field. Some of the stories I have told in my life have left people speechless while others in the group often times want to throw up. Yes, it is that bad. That is where your pork comes from. Would you like to know about chicken???
So Karma played her hand on me eventually. I had done a lot of terrible things in my life working in agriculture and one day life decided I would no longer do that. I went for one hell of a bad car ride one morning on the way to Hogshwitz and was left in a road ditch waiting to die...
I often have wondered why I didn't but I know now that life can only be taken for face value; what you make of it today.
I now live as clean of a life as possible. I do not consume animal products but it actually is not because of the things included here. I chose to eat this way because I was diagnosed with cancer... probably from eating to much pork.
Peace,
The Last Sage