Brief by Central Staff
Agriculture – February 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
We remember when pork came with a lot of tasty fat. We also remember, more recently, when it was so lean that it was advertised as “the other white meat.”
Now the pendulum might be swinging back. The current trend in pork, according to an article in the Jan. 13 Wall Street Journal, is now “fatter, darker and tastier,” which “tastes like pork used to taste before pig farmers bred their hogs to produce meat that’s 30% leaner than it was 20 years ago.”
Like organic beef, the new pork often comes from small family farms, where the pigs are allowed to roam freely. They get few if any antibiotics, and their diets contain no animal products.
Another part of the trend: it’s not generic pork, but pork from a specific pig and breed that can be traced back to Oliver Cromwell’s army mess in England or in this country, the pigs brought by the conquistadors from Spain to the New World.
As you might have guessed, it’s pricey: as much as $40 a pound, plus shipping, for tenderloin.
