Building A Better Pig
Pigs aren't porky anymore. Instead, they're as lanky as marathon runners. While the pig's makeover is partly a triumphant tale of producers meeting demands for leaner, more healthful meat, there's a cautionary message here, too. Today's pigs all too often don't taste good. With pigs, unlike New York socialites, it really is possible to be too thin.
I've discovered this the hard way, having despaired of pork roasts that are as dry as a Presto log. I knew pork wasn't always like this, because hogs and I have a history. My grandfather, Evan Ferrin, a professor of animal husbandry, was featured in Life magazine for developing improved feed. As a child, I spent many hours playing in hog barns in the Midwest, scratching the massive animals behind their ears while they nibbled the toes of my sneakers. Each fall, half a hog made its way into our family freezer, and all winter long we feasted on roasts, bacon, sausage, and chops. A bucket of lard was in the freezer, too, the magic ingredient in my mom's famously flaky pie crusts.
In the early 20th century, lard was a precious commodity. But starting in the 1950s, meat became more valuable than fat. Farmers started selecting leaner animals and experimenting with feed and housing to grow more muscle more quickly. That trend accelerated in the 1970s, when consumers began abandoning beef and eating more chicken to cut fat from their diets. Alarmed, in 1987, pork producers launched the "Other White Meat" campaign. It wasn't just hype. Supermarket pork is 31 percent lower in fat than it was 20 years ago. "All through the '80s and '90s, we continued to try to say we can get a leaner hog with more muscle," says Maynard Hogberg, head of animal science at Iowa State University. "But they lost the taste, they lost the juiciness, they lost the moisture content."
Today's "commodity" pig packs on almost a pound of muscle a day en route to its market weight of about 260 pounds. Hog operations are bigger than ever, with most housing 5,000 pigs in climate-controlled buildings. With 100 million hogs slaughtered each year, these efficiencies deliver cheaper meat for consumers and bigger profits for producers. They have also sparked growing concerns about animal welfare and pollution.
Along the way, breeders inadvertently engineered in some serious problems. Pigs became anxious and would drop dead at the slightest upset. Researchers have identified the gene for "porcine stress syndrome" and can test for it. Meatpackers address the dry meat problem by "pumping" pork with a phosphate and brine solution, a fix that also means consumers are paying for meat that is really 12 percent added water.
Steven Lonergan, a meat scientist at Iowa State, has identified three factors that make meat tender: intramuscular marbling; whether the muscle was used for locomotion (legs) or posture (tenderloin); and proteolysis, where enzymes that break down muscle continue to work after the animal's death. "More protein degradation, more tender product," Lonergan says. He'd like to figure out a way to control that process to make a very lean cut of meat meltingly tender.
Other pig people say they've got the taste solution. Breeders have rediscovered traditional breeds like Durocs and Hampshires--the kinds of pigs my grandfather worked with. These pigs are chunkier; a Berkshire produces a pork loin with about 5 percent fat, compared with 2 percent in commodity pork.
Niman Ranch Pork Co. in Oakland, Calif., started selling pork from such breeds in 1997. "Our pigs are 48 to 51 percent lean, whereas the regular packers like 54 percent or even more," says Paul Willis, a farmer in Thornton, Iowa, who manages the company. Many of the firm's techniques are also throwbacks; pigs are raised in smaller groups with access to sunlight and pasture.
In a very unscientific taste test conducted on my patio, the darker, fattier Niman pork grilled up juicier and tastier than commodity pork. But it comes at a price. Niman Ranch chops sell at Whole Foods Market for about $8, while supermarket chops are often $3.
Chefs at high-end restaurants have embraced the new pork. "It's a beautiful flavor, beautiful color," says Paul Bertolli, chef at Oliveto Cafe & Restaurant in Oakland, Calif. Bertolli butchers a whole hog each week and features pickled pig's ear giardiniera as an hors d'oeuvre. Yet Tom Valenti, owner of Ouest and Cesca in New York City, says his customers aren't about to pop for a $30 pork chop. "There's an acceptable flavor level to commercial pork," Valenti says. Instead, he's trying moister cuts, like braised pork shanks, and experiments with cooking pork less. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends cooking pork to 160 degrees to kill the parasite that causes trichinosis. But since pigs no longer eat garbage, cases of trichinosis have dropped to a dozen or so annually, almost all from eating wild game. Valenti now yanks a chop off the grill "five or seven minutes before I think would be prudent." The solution to the pig problem may lie in science or in a return to the pigs of the past, but it may also lie in having the guts to say, "I'll take my pork chop medium rare."
THE PERFECT PIG
Among the first animals to be domesticated, pigs were found to be adaptable, easy to raise, and the source of a variety of meats. Although in the past 50 years pigs have been bred to be much leaner, farmers are turning to traditional breeds to improve meat quality.
FERAL PIG: First domesticated in the middle east and central Asia 9,000 years ago.
1900 PIG: Bigger was better when lard was prized. Some pigs topped 2,000 pounds.
MODERN PIG: Lean and muscled, with a market weight of 260 pounds.
Stephen Rountree-- USN&WR
This story appears in the August 15, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.