I try to buy pasture-raised pork when I can find it, and failing that I buy pork from one of the small local or regional farm operations such as Pure Country Pork in Ephrata, WA. Unfortunately, it seems that a growing number of outlets here in Seattle have switched from carrying pork produced by small to medium regional meat processors to carrying the “PrairieFresh” label. This is the ‘brand’ of Seaboard Foods, the third largest industrial pork producer in the country!
Back when it became clear that we were in the midst of a serious economic downturn, I wondered how it would impact small farmers and retailers that were producing ‘real’ meat, poultry, dairy, and produce - the local, the sustainable, the organic - and selling their products at prices that would allow them to put food on their own tables and to continue operating into the future. I suspected that many in the ‘market’ would start rationalizing the purchase of industrial organics and even products from Big Ag with ‘natural’ and other ‘down-on-the-farm’ sounding names. It would seem that this process is underway.
The ‘homey’ sounding name was a tip off when I first noticed the PrairieFresh brand, with a little red heart on the logo in place of the dot for the first letter 'i,' in a local high-end grocery a number of years back, and it didn’t take much research to find the facts behind the brand. Seaboard Foods has industrial pig operations, including CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation), in the Midwest and Southwest, and it processes about 5 million hogs per year - it also markets and sells an additional 5 million hogs per year processed by Triumph Foods, the country’s second largest pork producer. Unfortunately today in the era of ‘boxed’ meat this level of transparency is not always available, especially when only select information makes it to the label on the cello wrapped white trays.
Two of the most over used phrases, and as such virtually meaningless, in the marketing and selling of pork these days are ‘natural’ and ‘family farmed.’ While in some cases the use of these phrases conveys real meaning, it can be difficult to tell when this is the case. (Does a family-run, industrial-scale CAFO qualify as ‘family farmed’?) Of course, it is just as important to understand what is not on the label these days. This was brought home to me over the last week after I saw the two-part Katy Couric Investigates on CBS News regarding the ‘overuse’ of antibiotics in livestock production in this country with a specific focus on hog and pork. Many factory farms in this country rely on the regular use of antibiotics to promote rapid growth and to keep the hogs from getting sick in their over-crowded and confined living conditions. The gist of the piece is that the overuse of antibiotics is causing more harm than good by helping to breed virulent strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria that are increasingly being transmitted to humans.
The first part of the piece focuses on factory farms in this country, and neither the Pork Board’s spokesperson nor the factory hog farmer come off well. The second part, which focuses on hog and pork production in Denmark, is even more enlightening, except apparently to the Pork Board’s spokesperson. One of the world’s top pork producing countries, Denmark weaned itself off antibiotic use in hog production in 2006, and as a necessary adjunct it changed the way the pigs were raised and fed. Despite fears to the contrary by many, pork production continued to grow at a healthy pace. As a result, the entire EU followed suit last year. The Pork Board spokeswoman, and factory farmer look even worse in here since they claimed eliminating the use of antibiotics would raise the price of everything and there would be a lot more suffering or dead pigs - never for a moment did they focus on the other changes that would be required to make this change successful. As with all CBS reports of this nature the coup de grace is delivered by a graphic showing the estimated price increase resulting from a ‘no antibiotic’ policy…pennies per pound at the meat case. (After viewing part one of the CBS report, why not view the images on the Pure Country Pork website?)
But what does this all mean when you look at a cuts of pork repackaged in white styro-foam trays and cello wrap labeled ‘natural’ or ‘naturally raised’ with no mention of antibiotics, or when you see ‘branded’ pre-packaged pork with "100% Natural" on the label but no information about antibiotics?
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