In the United States, also, the demand for pork products is growing. It
would grow very much more rapidly were it not for three drawbacks: the
custom of denaturing hams and bacon and of marketing the tough meat of
old lard-pigs, and the impudent sale to the public of the products of
swill-fed hogs that are not fit to eat.
It is impossible to place too much emphasis on the fact that no matter
of how fine a breed the pig may be, its meat is spoiled if the feed
given it is of an offensive nature. Farm-kitchen refuse is harmless
when mixed with milk and greens, but porkers fed on city swill and
garbage do not yield palatable meat.
Pigs seldom have fair play. Most farmers lower the value of the
pork they raise by not giving the animals fresh air, sunshine, some
exercise, and clean sties. In these respects we are not the only
sinners. From an admirable editorial article in the London "Times" of
June 27, 1912, I cite the following:
"The pig is generally kept in conditions of a grossly unsanitary kind.
He is quite a cleanly animal if left to himself, but he is kept in
sties which compel him to wallow in filth all day and to sleep in a
horribly confined and polluted atmosphere when he seeks shelter. Nature
did not construct him for such conditions, but for an open-air life,
and it is not really surprising that he develops swine-fever, which,
by the way, is remarkably like the fevers that afflict overcrowded,
filthy, and unventilated human dwellings. Cowhouses are regulated, but
pigsties are not. Their position, however, is regulated in a way that
presses very hardly upon cottagers. It is calmly assumed that pigsties
must be dirty and offensive, so instead of insisting that they shall
be clean, legislation decrees that they shall be at a distance from
dwellings which makes it impossible for a cottager to pay his rent with
cheaply raised bacon."
Pigs that are overfed and denied fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and a
clean bed cannot possibly yield meat with a tempting Flavor, for such
animals are really diseased--as unhealthy as the slum-dwellers in our
large cities, whom no cannibal would touch.
The best American ham, as everybody knows, is the Virginia, cut from
hogs that roam the woods, live on acorns and beech nuts and are
thoroughly healthy.
The attitude of the ancient Britons toward the pig was one almost of
reverence, not only because of its utility in the larder, but because
it fed on the acorns from the sacred oaks.
In those days all British pork was no doubt similar to the meat of the
young wild boar. Civilization, as in so many other things, brought
on a temporary deterioration which caused pork to be despised and
considered fit only for those who had not the means to buy something
better; and it is only now that we are coming to realize fully that the
fault was that of the farmers who, by refusing to give the pigs fair
play, made it impossible for them to come up to the highest epicurean
standard as regards Flavor.
[Illustration: The Boar]
According to high geological authority, the boar, from whom our
domestic pigs are descended, was coeval with the extinct species of the
mastodon and the dinotherium, and "hence must be regarded as the most
ancient of our domesticated animals."
An aristocrat, in other words, is the pig! He is selfish, like most
"aristocrats"--that cannot be denied; but he is clean--even his mud
baths are taken merely to cool off or to scour his skin. Trainers,
moreover, will tell you that he is one of the most intelligent of
animals.
Pig brains are good to eat, too--better than calves' brains, but
are usually sold as calves' brains because that's what the ignorant
purchaser asks for. And pork, young, tender, and not too fat, is good
all the year round, not only in the months which have an R in them.