Currently browsing posts about: Pork

I subscribe to GlobalMeatNews.com to keep me up on the international meat business.  It has just published a collection of its articles—on pork.

Special Edition: Pork

Pork is the most eaten meat in world and maintaining the position is anything but easy. In this special newsletter, GlobalMeatNews explores the breakthroughs, scandals and market trends that continue to kept traders on their toes.

• Russia’s Cherkizovo suspected of tax evasion: Russian law enforcement agencies have said they will conduct a detailed investigation into criminal allegations against Cherkizovo, Russia’s leading pork and poultry producer… Read
• Three Brazilian pork firms approved to sell to South Korea: Three Brazilian slaughterhouses in the southern state of Santa Catarina have been cleared to sell pork to South Korea, the world’s fourth-biggest importer of pig meat… Read
• ASF-infected meat detected in Russian plants: Meat products infected with African swine fever (ASF) have been detected on retail shelves in at least two Russian regions, Pskov Oblast and Khabarovsk Krai, according to Russian veterinary body Rosselkhoznadzor… Read
• Industry warned to ‘stop cutting pig price’: European pork processors have to stop cutting the price paid to pig suppliers, the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has warned… Read
• Asian animal welfare puts world leaders to ‘shame’: A Thai pork producer’s decision to phase out pig cages within the next decade could have major repercussions around the world, an animal welfare advocate said… Read
• Danish Crown grows south-east Asia presence: With economic growth in south-east Asia continuing, the Danish Crown Group has announced that it is establishing a head office for the region… Read

Barry Estabrook.  Pig Tales: An Omnivore’s Quest for Sustainable Meat.  WW Norton, 2015.

I was happy to be asked to blurb this one.  It’s a great read:

Estabrook tells two powerful stories here.  The first is about the appalling ways in which Big Pig raises animals, pollutes the environment, and uses the political system to avoid and fight regulation.  The second is about how skilled animal husbandry and respect for the intelligence of pigs produces calmer animals, more delicious meat, and a far more satisfying life for farmers and pigs alike.  Pig Tales is beautifully written.  It is also deeply touching.

My e-mail inbox is flooded with copies of an op-ed from today’s New York Times arguing that pigs running around outside have “higher rates” of Salmonella, toxoplasma, and, most alarming, trichina than pigs raised in factory farms. The writer,  James McWilliams, is a prize-winning historian at Texas State San Marcos whose forthcoming book is about the dangers of the locavore movement to the future of food.

I put “higher rates” in quotation marks because that is not what the study measured.  The study on which McWilliams based his op-ed is published in Foodborne Pathogens and Disease. The investigators actually measured “seropositivity” (antibodies) in the pigs’ blood.  But the presence of antibodies does not necessarily mean that the animals – or their meat – are infected.  It means that the free-range pigs were exposed to the organisms at some point and developed immunity to them.  The industrial pigs were not exposed and did not develop immunity to these microorganisms.  But you would never know that from reading the op-ed.   How come?

Guess who paid for the study?  The National Pork Board, of course.

The Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins has much to say about all this.  My point, as always, is that sponsored studies are invariably designed in ways that produce results favorable to the sponsor.    In this case, the sponsor represents industrial pork producers.

April 14 update:  the editors of the New York Times have added a note to the electronic version of Professor McWilliams’ op-ed pointing out the National Pork Board sponsorship of the study on which he based his piece.  And McWilliams rebuts arguments against his piece on the Atlantic Food Channel, while conceding that he may have gotten the science wrong.