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Friday, July 27, 2012

For my bacon-loving friends

What is it about bacon? I hear my friends talk about it, I see posts about it on Facebook, and I see deals about it on sites like livingsocial. 

Apparently, people love it. They love it enough to pretend that it does not come from a tortured animal. And most bacon (like 99%) comes from factory farmed animals. 



So, I am going to challenge my bacon-loving friends and family to try to eat bacon that comes from humanely raised hogs. Buy your pork from the farmers market, or pork that is certified humane or animal welfare approved


Or go support events that source their pork from humane farms. For example, Prince of Petworth posts an event  for a "Porc Out." They source the farm and actually charge a reasonable price for the life of another animal.  


The hogs are from Leaping Waters Farm, which is an open animal farm. They raise beef cows, hogs and hens. Here is the description of the hogs that "Porc Out" attendees will eat: 
The Large Black Hogs (LB Hogs) "...are well suited to outdoor operations like we have here...They are excellent mothers who protect and feed litters of up to fourteen with extraordinary devotion. Their relaxed nature gives them an advantage in the meat they produce..." 
LB Hogs from Leaping Waters Farm


The "Porc Out" may seem expensive. It is $50 for food, but that reflects the real cost of pork. Today, you can buy a package of bacon for about $4, but that is heavily subsidized by our government -- thanks to the influences of Big Pork and Big Corn -- and it is done so at the expense of our health, our environment and animal welfare. 


At least at an event like this, customers are paying the real price of pork, and good pork. Not pork that has been raised in gestation crates. Not pork that is packed into pens so close, they can't move. And not pork that suffers from beginning to end. 


I don't eat meat, and I will never think it is a good thing to do. And it is a fact that we do not need to eat meat.  However, if we are going to live in a meat-eating world, at least it can be a humane one. 


So, I say to my bacon-loving friends. If you're gonna eat pork, do it this way.