In the Biden administration, more conservation of energy is being emphasized in our food production. Thanks to modern farming techniques, the use of chemicals has and is still declining relative to the output of food. The use of chemical fertilizer has declined steadily in the past 20 years. The same is true for pesticides.
The saying that milk comes from contented cows is true. When I toured several large farms in the Amish country in Pennsylvania not too long ago, soothing music was piped into the barns as the cows were being milked. Not to be outdone, the pigs in their pens also were being serenaded with music piped into their pens. However, the music for them was a little more lively — more like marching music. All of these additional comforts are designed to increase food production and decrease the use of pesticides.
Maybe, in the near future, we can have concerts with famous artists in fields and barns. I think it would work better with singers than a complete musical production, like an opera, with singers, dancers and an orchestra. I think just some singers with orchestra would work better for pigs, since many of them go to sleep at the drop of a hat.
In Europe, the EU now requires that pigs have ample light, less noise, and more space. To help these highly intelligent animals overcome boredom, it is required that pigs have access to “materials to enable proper activities” — that is, toys.
There is also a movement afoot that cell-cultured products eventually may replace living animals. Count me out on that. I want to know that my pork chops were once running around in the pen, and I don’t mean a jail.
Pork is the world’s most widely eaten meat, despite the fact that of the leading religions, two — Judaism and Islam — forbid eating it. In addition, there are pockets of people around the world who avoid pork, such as the Navajo Indians in North America, Guiana Indians in South America, Laplanders in northern Europe and Yakuts in Turkey.
In Hawaii, women were forbidden to eat pork until 1819, and even today, they are not supposed to prepare and cook the alua (roast pork), which is the main dish at a luau.
The origin of the common pig is mysterious. In the zoological sense, there has never been such an animal as a wild pig (except for those that might have escaped from domestication). Most historians agree that man domesticated the wild boar and evolved it into a different family of animals as distinguished from its ancestor. The pig had no tusks, as does the boar.
Pigs first came to what is now the United States in 1542, having been brought by Hernando de Soto when he landed near Tampa, Florida. Cortez, however, brought the first pigs to the Americas earlier, when he reached Mexico. Records show that he and his men gave a feast for the Indians outside of what is now Mexico City. The Indians enthusiastically welcomed the European pig, as it provided them with fat to enrich their fat-poor diet.
The Pilgrims in Massachusetts and the settlers of Virginia soon started importing English pigs after coming to the New World. By 1640, the Massachusetts settlers were carrying on a profitable trade in salt pork. Four years later, the pig was responsible for an important development in the colony’s government. A neighborhood dispute over a stray sow snowballed into such a major conflict that it caused the General Court, the colony’s governing body, to split into two houses.
In Virginia’s mild climate, with pastures and forest rich in feed, “Hogs run where they list, and find their own support in the Woods, without any Care of the Owner,” wrote Robert Beverly, a plantation owner in 1705. William Byrd, another prominent Virginian, complained that Virginians ate so much pork that they were becoming “extremely hoggish in their temper and prone to grunt rather than speak.”
In colonial times, the safest way to slaughter the half-wild hogs was to shoot them. In order to catch the semi-wild pigs, “trail dogs” were used to run a hog down and then bark to give its location for the “catch dogs.” These dogs would then hold the pig down by its ears until it could be lassoed and penned
In America, the pig had a close association with several historical events. In Pennsylvania, during King George’s War (called the War of Austrian Succession in Europe), the pacifistic Quakers balked at providing pork to the army.
In Virginia, voters electing members of the House of Burgesses were urged to make the right decisions with large quantities of barbecued pork offered to them by the candidates. Good manners were further enhanced in Virginia when Sally Fairfax, who had married George Washington’s best friend in spite of being in love with Washington, became friends with Washington’s wife, Martha Custis. Reportedly they exchanged pork pâté recipes.
In the early days of this country, pork was the prime meat, because it could be butchered in the fall and salted, smoked or made into sausage, which would keep for months. Every Southern plantation had a smokehouse for hams. Most had their own unique recipes for curing hams.
America was built by pioneers, who relied on meat from the pig. Covered wagons, which started west even before the Gold Rush of 1849, usually carried 75 pounds of bacon per adult. Lewis and Clark started out their expedition with 50 kegs of pork. The guides and fur traders who traversed the northern part of this country and Canada in canoes were called “pork eaters,” as salt pork was the only meat in their diet. Salt pork also was frequently the only meat of the slaves who worked the Southern plantations.
Immigrants to America from pork-eating countries brought their techniques for treating the meat and recipes for cooking pork with them. German immigrants who settled Cincinnati in the 1830s and ‘40s caused the city to be nicknamed Porkopolis.
The quality of American pork improved greatly with the advent of the railroads. Pigs, which had formerly been bred tough enough to walk to market, were now being transported by rail. Pork breeders became interested in developing flesh that would be more tender and tastier.
Pigs are easily trained. They provided entertainment between courses at ancient Roman banquets, and they were dressed in human clothing to entertain at the court of Louis XIV. Shall we get a basketball for the pigs at the local farm?
February 17, 2021 at 06:00AM
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Hilde Lee: Pork has played important role in American foodways - The Daily Progress
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