Quotations concerning pigs
and the responsibility for flavor
Pork is the most favored of meats worldwide. Imagine the weight of responsibility they would feel if pigs knew this and had to choose their swills and tubers as to best affect their own ultimate flavor…
Instead, the pig cries out as it runs away with all its might to escape the killing attentions of the butcher: “Prevention is better than curing!”
And then, there’s the Stock Market… Pork bellies, hog futures… Hog Futures? Hogs have no future! Bacon is NOT a career!
Gallagher (b. 1947)
U.S. comedian and prop comic. From a broadcast of a live concert on Public Television (c. 1996).
Hog Butcher for the World
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
U.S. poet. “Chicago” from Chicago Poems (1916).
The Industrial Revolution has turned England’s peasantry into half’starved paupers and destroyed rural skills… A pig in almost every cottage sty! That is the infallible mark of a happy people.
William Cobbett (1763-1835)
English journalist and social reformer. Rural Rides (1830).
We use everything but the oink.
Anonymous, a favorite motto of U.S. pork packing companies.
The killing is done on the second floor, to which the hogs ascend by means of an inclined walk. Entering a pen at the top of this walk, they are unceremoniously knocked on the head with a hammer…
Harper’s Weekly, January 11, 1868.
The future of the global pork industry is bright with opportunity. But we can no longer just produce pigs or even pork. We must produce raw material that is easily processed… adaptable to case-ready packaging as well as to carrying a brand name, a nutritional lable and a nutritional claim… Pork will have to adapt to serve as a flavor carrier and as a nutrient delivery system. Pork products will be used as ingredients, flavoring agents and aroma generators.
Ken Prusa, a meat scientist at Iowa State University. “Are You Prepared to Produce Quality Pork?” in PIGS 98, August 1998.
