An unabashed carnivore (well, omnivore actually), I had lunch
last week at a local smokehouse. The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter was playing on the oldies station. I commented to the
18-y.o. waitress while thumbing at the radio, “I missed the past 20 annual Farewell
Tours by these guys.” She shrugged and answered, “I don’t even know the band.”
Sigh. Fortunately she had delivered porcine goodness to the table to distract
me from the generation gap: candied bacon and a pulled pork sandwich with a
fiery bbq sauce. Distract me it did.
As Katherine Rogers explains in her book Pork: A Global History, pigs (Sus
scrufa) were among the earliest animals to be domesticated. (Dogs were
first by far, but as hunting companions.) It was once thought that farming and
husbandry (the Neolithic revolution) preceded the appearance of permanent
settlements and villages – that agriculture provided the prerequisite food
surpluses. The archaeological record reveals this to be backward. Today the
world’s remaining hunter-gatherers exist in extreme and marginal environments,
but this was not the case 10,000 years ago. They throve in temperate regions
rich in game and edible plants. In eastern Anatolia as early as the waning days
of the last ice age they could and did settle down in permanent villages while exploiting
only the local wildlife for food. They were well-fed enough to build impressive
stone monuments such those at Göbekli Tepe. Yet, the growth of these settled
populations did put a strain on wild resources, so the deliberate planting of grains
and the deliberate taming of farm animals eventually began. Two of the most
significant animal domestications were cattle from aurochs and pigs from wild
boar: both events occurred about 10,000 years ago. (DNA studies show all modern
cattle to be descended from an original stock of only 80.) At very nearly the same
time as this was happening in the Near East (and for very much the same reasons)
pigs also were domesticated independently in China.
Pigs were easier than cattle (which also had other uses such
as dairy) for settled people to raise on small plots and farms for food, so
pork became the more prevalent meat in relatively densely settled regions until
very modern times. Pork products have another upside: properly smoked or cured,
they can be preserved up to a year without refrigeration. (The smoking/curing
process is rushed and incomplete for ham, bacon, and sausages sold in
supermarkets today, so they do not last long even with refrigeration;
traditionally smoked meats are still available from craft producers but they
are pricey.) The very fact that pork was so ubiquitous in prehistory, the
ancient world, and the medieval world made the prohibitions against it by some
religions (notably Judaism and Islam) a greater mark of distinction than
otherwise would be the case.
Pigs were once a far more common sight than they are today. In
the ultra-urbanized 21st century it is easy to forget that for the
bulk of history the overwhelming majority of the world’s population was not
only poor but rural. In 1900 (according to Our
World in Data) only 16% lived in cities. In 1800 it was 7%. Rural folk raised
pigs and chickens even on very small plots and many of them were allowed to wander
freely. In wooded areas of Europe and North America pigs could feed themselves.
The free-ranging omnivores would run “hog wild” eating acorns, mushrooms (they
have an excellent nose for truffles), small animals, and just about anything
else. Even penned, however, pigs happily live on leftovers that otherwise might
be thrown away: table scraps, whey, brewers mash, etc. Samuel Sydney in The Pig (1860) writes, “There is no
savings bank for the labourer like the pig.” He explains that a piglet can be
bought for a trifle in spring or summer and grown on household scraps. The
owner then can sell the hams the ensuing winter for more than enough “to buy
another pig, and the rest will remain for his own consumption, without seeming
to have cost anything.” I know this advice was followed at least into the 1930s
since my paternal grandparents in the Depression did just that.
Nowadays (since the mid-19th century actually) pigs
on commercial farms are mostly corn-fed. This leads to the peculiar hog/corn
price cycle, of which elementary Economics textbook authors are so fond as an
illustrative example of price interactions. When corn (maize) prices are high,
hog farmers sell their pigs rather than pay for the pricey feed. The rise in
pork supply on the market drives down pork prices. The drop in demand for feed from
pig farmers in turn drives down corn prices, which soon prompts farmers to withhold
their pigs from market in order to fatten them up with cheap corn. The consequent
reduction in pork supply in markets drives up pork prices which prompts farmers
to raise more pigs. This increases demand for corn feed, which pushes up corn
prices. So, hog and corn prices constantly cycle in opposite directions.
Barring some other major disruption (e.g. bumper crops or crop failures) when
one price is high the other is low.
By the late 19th century in Europe and the
Americas, beef shouldered aside pork not only as the preferred meat dish (as it
already long was among those who could afford it) but as the more common one. This
shift to beef hasn’t happened everywhere. In China the pig has held onto its #1
position in the 21st century. As yet, the (steadily rising) annual per capita consumption of all meats in
China remains below US levels, but for pork consumption in particular China has
the edge: 38kg in China vs 28kg in the USA. Either number is a lot of pork. For
myself, I’m as happy with a braised pork chop as with a prime rib – sometimes
happier.
There are those of a certain age who may chalk up to
nostalgia the seeming memory that commercially sourced hams and chops were
tastier in their youths. They really were. North American supermarket cuts are leaner
today – typically by 19% compared to half a century ago – in order to address
health concerns that a large portion of the public started taking seriously beginning
in the 1960s. (Remember “the other white meat” industry ads?) This does reduce
the calories in pork products, so there is that, but since fat enhances flavor
it comes at a cost. Ironically, there have been some second thoughts about dietary
fat among medical researchers in the past decade (see analysis published
in The American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition),
but these haven’t yet changed what is on the shelves.
I’m aware of the concerns of vegetarians and vegans. (Those
who know me personally know just how close to home those views are.) I don’t
intend to engage in that debate here. Whatever it says about my
moral choices, however, while menus like that of the above referenced smokehouse
still exist, I’ll be ordering from them.
Not many large animals (i.e. excluding mosquitos and worms and such) reciprocally
regard us as lunch at present. Though our proto-human ancestors were prey as
often as predator, in the modern world fewer than 2000 humans are killed and
eaten by large animals annually. As a point of interest, however, it’s long
been noted that humans taste like pork. Anthony Burgess, for one, confirmed
this. He wrote about his attendance shortly after WW2 at a ceremonial feast in
New Guinea; there, he partook of an offering “very much like a fine, delicately
sweet pork, which is what I thought it was.” He was shaken to learn it was a
warrior killed in a skirmish. He didn’t ask for seconds. Perhaps, however, this
flavor profile explains the aliens’ enthusiasm in that famous Twilight Zone episode.
The Dorsets: Pork Chops (1961)
No comments:
Post a Comment