The piglets are here!

As I mentioned in my previous post, Heritage Foods USA co-founder, Patrick Martins, and Head of Business Development, Sarah Obraitis, hit the road on a 40-day, cross-country journey (along with two filmmakers, Anthony Frattolillo and David Kavanaugh) to visit and interview chefs, farmers, and butchers across the country.

On Monday, June 26, the Heritage team stopped in Escondido to deliver a pair of Red Wattle piglets to San Pasqual Academy where they will be raised by resident foster teens.  The 20-acre farm, located on the Academy grounds, is headed by farmer and teacher, Scott Murray, president of Slow Food San Diego.

Scott (in center with hat) was on hand Monday to welcome the pigs to their new home, a special enclosure made of chicken wire and reinforced with chain link fence, which will protect the pigs from predators.  The pigs will spend 4-6 months in this outdoor pen before being moved to a series of pastures. 

For anyone who doubts that these pigs are better off than their conventional counterparts in factory farms take a look here.

You don’t have to be an animal rights’ activist to understand that raising pigs in metal cages on concrete floors is unnatural.  Watching the arrival of the Red Wattle piglets convinced me that animals, even if they are to be raised for food, deserve humane treatment. 

If you’ve ever been on a long car trip, I’m sure you can relate.  After riding in the back of a van for the past 4 days, the pigs couldn’t wait to get out and explore their new home.  Patrick picked them up one by one and set them down in the pen. The piglets made their way around, sniffing and rooting in the dirt.

Pigs have an acute sense of smell and this olfactory tour told them everything they needed to know about this place. They stuck their snouts deep into the loose earth and pushed forward, like little bulldozers.

They rolled around and around in the dirt.  They chased each other around the pen with a speed belying their stubby legs and high heels.  One shady corner of the pen had been wet down with a hose.  Within minutes, these pigs were doing what pigs do best, wallowing.

These pigs are only four of 300 Red Wattle pigs left in the world. The endangered breed, called Red Wattle because of their coppery color and the wattles that hang from their necks, originated in New Caledonia, a French Island in the South Pacific near Australia.  They were brought to New Orleans in the late 1700s and are known for their gentle nature and lean meat. 

So how does San Diego fit into all this?

Why bring a pig native to the South Pacific and traditionally raised in New Orleans all the way here?  It’s a question I meant to ask, but I got distracted watching and taking pictures of the piglets romping around.

Still, I can make an educated guess.  First of all, pigs are not native to America, so any breeds here are imported from somewhere else.   Most commercial hog production in the U.S. is based on crossbred animals.  That’s fine until you get one or two companies dominating the marketplace (as they do) and pretty soon, as with turkey or chicken, consumers no longer have a choice as to what breed they can buy.

Patrick Martins founded Heritage Foods in 2001.  As the sales and marketing arm of Slow Food, it offered farmers a means of marketing their artisan foods and provided an alternative to industrial agriculture. Their first venture was a national mail order campaign organized to save four breeds of endangered turkeys. The Heritage Turkey Project helped double the population of each breed and brought the number of small family farms that raise them from eight to eighty.  Two years ago Heritage Foods became an independent company and now distributes a wide array of fish, poultry, meat, and Native American foods.

Heritage Foods also promotes a fully traceable food supply. Patrick believes that consumers have the right to know exactly where their food comes from and every detail about the way in which it was raised. 

I was out there at the farm on Monday.  I saw for myself how these pigs are being treated.  They looked pretty happy to me.  In fact, given the 104 degree heat that day, the pigs being sprayed with water were a lot happier than most of the humans surrounding them. 

As we watched them and commented on how cute they were, one woman noted with sadness that it was a shame that their offspring were going to be eaten.  Sad, yes, but reality.  These are farm animals.  Livestock to be raised as food.  And the best way to save these cute, rare Red Wattle pigs is to eat them.

Sounds counter-intuitive, I know.  But just look at the case of the American bison.  Slaughtered to the brink of extinction, its habitat destroyed by European settlers, the animal’s numbers plummeted from tens of millions to just 750 by the end of the 19th century. 

(Bison skull pile circa 1870).

Today, thanks to conservation efforts, the breed has made a small comeback.  Nothing near its original population, of course, but at least viable as a species.  Today many of the remaining bison are raised for human consumption.

Similar efforts are underway to bring back heritage breeds of domestic livestock.  Apparently, the best way to ensure viability of rare breeds is to create a market for them. 

For me, this raises some troubling questions:

1. Why does it take the near extermination of a species for us to sit up and take notice?

2. Creating a market for artisanal products has allowed some small, independent farmers to stay in business, paying them a living wage, something commodity farming certainly doesn’t provide them.  But who can afford to pay $15-20 per pound for meat?  What’s wrong with our food system? 

Next: the economics of real food

Comments

[tanabutler]

Hey, can I come visit?

You know I love this stuff.

Thank you.

[Angie]

Sure, Tana, come on down!

[Kady]

I LOVE pigs. Seriously. I have pig art(tasteful ones, pig books, and one day hopefully a pet pig. It's so great to read that some pigs are being treated well. Thanks for such a great post!