PIG IGNORANT
Posted: 06 Mar 2026, 02:58
PIG IGNORANT
21 July 2004
For thousands of years the pig has been the friend of the poor. If you had space and enough resources to obtain a weaner you could feed it on household waste and whatever you could glean from the hedgerows and woods and after perhaps a couple of years finish up with a large pig to kill.
The beauty of the pig is that it is such an easy animal to slaughter and deal with. Every part of the animal can be used except for a small part of the intestines not used for sausage cases, even the blood was collected and made into puddings. It used to be said that all that was wasted was the squeal. Usually the hams, sides and forequarters were salted down for bacon and the rest of the meat eaten fresh. The usual practice in the days before refrigeration was to share the fresh meat with other pig owners and they, in turn, would share theirs with you when they killed.
This regime and the bacon it produced was the norm until after the Second World War when pressure on the agricultural industry to produce food led to the great surge of ‘improvements’ which was the hallmark of British farming in those years. The industry led the world in productivity increase. This ethos spilled over into the food manufacturing industries who employed modern marketing to increase sales and production in order to achieve benefits of scale and higher profits.
The modern industry kills pigs at about 200lbs weight but a cottager’s pig would often be twice this size, 20 Score or 400lbs. Pigs this size or larger are still killed today but these are old breeding sows and the meat usually finishes up in the manufacturing end of the market in meat pies or other heavily processed applications. One of the first modifications the buyers imposed on the growers was to achieve consistent slaughter weights which suited their market best. This was our first loss in quality as the mature meat from a fully grown pig has more taste. Anybody who has eaten roast spare rib from a freshly killed, well-grown pig will never forget it.
The next improvement was to reduce the back fat and extend the length of the pig. The main driving force for this was when the UK industry realised that customers seemed to prefer Danish Bacon. At that time the main breed used by the Danes was the Landrace which was a longer and leaner pig. These were imported and cross bred with the standard Large White to alter its conformation. Experiments with feeding regimes and slaughter weights confirmed that such a pig, killed at about 200lbs dead weight produced the desired size of cuts and fat thickness.
The next target of the industry was faster processing times. A dry-salt cured side of bacon is practically indestructible. It could quite happily survive hung up in the kitchen as long as it was covered in muslin to keep the flies off. The industry realised that they didn’t need bacon to keep for this length of time and with modern refrigeration they could use a different curing method. The answer was a wet cure which in effect is simply pickling the pig meat in a solution of salts. This was far quicker and it was soon realised that other additives in the cure enhanced water retention and raised the finished weight of the product, in effect, selling water. This was the birth of what is now described as bacon by the supermarkets. It’s actually sliced pickled pork which when fried exudes white froth as the pickling solution is driven out by the heat.
Old fashioned dry cured bacon from large pigs can still be found if you seek it out. It has more fat than lean and when you fry it all that comes out of it is clear bacon fat. It tastes like bacon used to taste and if you were reared on this it's the only bacon you will ever entertain. I hold it as one of the many examples where the food manufacturing and distribution interests have modified the consumer’s taste to increase profits at the expense of taste and quality.
You might be wondering about the title of this piece. It stems from three disparate news items that have come my way. There is to be a new programme called ‘Pig Brother’ where the usual hapless bunch of wannabees are to be decanted on to a derelict farm in Wales and made to farm pigs. News that the search for fatless meat has reached the stage where the supermarkets are injecting water and chemicals into meat to stop it drying out during cooking, and finally, the rise in captive breeding of Wild Boar to satisfy the demand for the meat.
Call me old fashioned but I object strongly to a noble animal like the pig being reduced to a stage prop for a tawdry television show. Who do the retailers think they are kidding when they sell 'succulent' meat that is ‘91% pork’? Captive breeding of Wild Boar means the loss of the essential characteristics of the meat and how long will it be before they do some enlightened cross breeding to ‘improve’ the strain? Exploitation all round I reckon of the pig, the customer and a great tradition of quality food. If that isn’t pig ignorant I don’t know what is.
21 July 2004
21 July 2004
For thousands of years the pig has been the friend of the poor. If you had space and enough resources to obtain a weaner you could feed it on household waste and whatever you could glean from the hedgerows and woods and after perhaps a couple of years finish up with a large pig to kill.
The beauty of the pig is that it is such an easy animal to slaughter and deal with. Every part of the animal can be used except for a small part of the intestines not used for sausage cases, even the blood was collected and made into puddings. It used to be said that all that was wasted was the squeal. Usually the hams, sides and forequarters were salted down for bacon and the rest of the meat eaten fresh. The usual practice in the days before refrigeration was to share the fresh meat with other pig owners and they, in turn, would share theirs with you when they killed.
This regime and the bacon it produced was the norm until after the Second World War when pressure on the agricultural industry to produce food led to the great surge of ‘improvements’ which was the hallmark of British farming in those years. The industry led the world in productivity increase. This ethos spilled over into the food manufacturing industries who employed modern marketing to increase sales and production in order to achieve benefits of scale and higher profits.
The modern industry kills pigs at about 200lbs weight but a cottager’s pig would often be twice this size, 20 Score or 400lbs. Pigs this size or larger are still killed today but these are old breeding sows and the meat usually finishes up in the manufacturing end of the market in meat pies or other heavily processed applications. One of the first modifications the buyers imposed on the growers was to achieve consistent slaughter weights which suited their market best. This was our first loss in quality as the mature meat from a fully grown pig has more taste. Anybody who has eaten roast spare rib from a freshly killed, well-grown pig will never forget it.
The next improvement was to reduce the back fat and extend the length of the pig. The main driving force for this was when the UK industry realised that customers seemed to prefer Danish Bacon. At that time the main breed used by the Danes was the Landrace which was a longer and leaner pig. These were imported and cross bred with the standard Large White to alter its conformation. Experiments with feeding regimes and slaughter weights confirmed that such a pig, killed at about 200lbs dead weight produced the desired size of cuts and fat thickness.
The next target of the industry was faster processing times. A dry-salt cured side of bacon is practically indestructible. It could quite happily survive hung up in the kitchen as long as it was covered in muslin to keep the flies off. The industry realised that they didn’t need bacon to keep for this length of time and with modern refrigeration they could use a different curing method. The answer was a wet cure which in effect is simply pickling the pig meat in a solution of salts. This was far quicker and it was soon realised that other additives in the cure enhanced water retention and raised the finished weight of the product, in effect, selling water. This was the birth of what is now described as bacon by the supermarkets. It’s actually sliced pickled pork which when fried exudes white froth as the pickling solution is driven out by the heat.
Old fashioned dry cured bacon from large pigs can still be found if you seek it out. It has more fat than lean and when you fry it all that comes out of it is clear bacon fat. It tastes like bacon used to taste and if you were reared on this it's the only bacon you will ever entertain. I hold it as one of the many examples where the food manufacturing and distribution interests have modified the consumer’s taste to increase profits at the expense of taste and quality.
You might be wondering about the title of this piece. It stems from three disparate news items that have come my way. There is to be a new programme called ‘Pig Brother’ where the usual hapless bunch of wannabees are to be decanted on to a derelict farm in Wales and made to farm pigs. News that the search for fatless meat has reached the stage where the supermarkets are injecting water and chemicals into meat to stop it drying out during cooking, and finally, the rise in captive breeding of Wild Boar to satisfy the demand for the meat.
Call me old fashioned but I object strongly to a noble animal like the pig being reduced to a stage prop for a tawdry television show. Who do the retailers think they are kidding when they sell 'succulent' meat that is ‘91% pork’? Captive breeding of Wild Boar means the loss of the essential characteristics of the meat and how long will it be before they do some enlightened cross breeding to ‘improve’ the strain? Exploitation all round I reckon of the pig, the customer and a great tradition of quality food. If that isn’t pig ignorant I don’t know what is.
21 July 2004