A friend of
mine (I’ll call him Brian for the while) sent me a clipping of an article from
the October issue of POPULAR MECHANICS entitled ‘How To Raise a Whiskey Pig’
(p20). And for those of you like myself,
not quite a vegetarian but put off from eating the flesh of poor animals raised
under modern standards of quantity at any cost to thought of consideration of
the living conditions of those animals and the use of antibiotics as growth
enhancers at any cost to the proliferation of ‘super-bugs’ that have now
outstripped out ability to fight them with our ‘magic-bullets’ (as they said in
the innocent days of the 30s) of vaccines, [wow long clause, eh], the thought
of animals raised in small quantities in humane conditions that might actually
taste great lead me briskly into this interesting article with its’ somewhat
humorist twist. You should read the
article in its one page entirety to get the full well written impact but for
now a quick synopsis.
Scott Bush,
founder of Templeton Rye had the great idea to raise a batch of pigs on ‘spent’
rye mash to possibly get the unique flavor of the rye whiskey in their
meat. He hired a specialist (doctorate
in swine nutrition) to determine just how much spent mash would be suitable for
proper nutrition in the daily diet of the pigs – a breed called Duroc that they
jointly decided upon as being best of choice.
Starting with 9 week old little piggies they fed them the crafted menu
for 20 some weeks till they were each around 210 pounds and then turned them
into marketable meat for upscale restaurants.
Top Chef winner Stephanie
Izard who cooked one at her Little Goat Diner cheerfully says that there is
nothing in the taste to indicate that there was 20% rye mash in their diet –
but that indeed the meat was flavorful with guests commenting that the pig was
the best they had ever eaten.
So score one
for small scale farming and one for trying an unusual feeding technique to
jointly turn out a best in show.
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