On Eating Meat by Matthew Evans

Author:Matthew Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2019-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

Note the words, ‘as required by consumers’. So it’s your fault they add hormones to pig food.

By this stage in my research I was wondering if pigs are just a chemical cocktail dreamt up in a lab. Then I learned about Improvac, the chemical castrator, which according to the maker, Pfizer, can lead to about 4 kilograms extra lean muscle mass at slaughter, along with an overall larger pig for the same feed in the same time. (Improvac’s original aim, to reduce the hormonal ‘boar taint’ that can occur in male pigs after reaching puberty, is a more noble goal. But hey, Pfizer wants to sell the product, so why not tout its growth-promoting qualities, too?)

Now, all of this chemical input, I’m sure it’s fine. I’m sure the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, who we met earlier in the previous chapter on antibiotics, are all over it. Some of this chemical input reduces the need for feed and so, it could be argued, reduces the ecological footprint of raising pigs. The problem, from my point of view – someone who wants pork to taste good – is that in order to make the pork lean, they actually make it tough and dry.

For the 20,000 years or so that we’ve been domesticating pigs, we’ve included flavour as one of the major characteristics we care about. We’ve bred for various features in domesticated animals. For size, for bigger litters, for domesticity so they don’t eat us. For health. For flavour, because that’s quite important when you think about the end use of the product: food. For about the last 80 years, though, flavour – along with mothering instinct – hasn’t really been on the agenda. So these fast-growing, relatively immobile pigs, who put on lean muscle mass thanks to some work by research chemists, are a bit dry and tough.

That’s why the industry has come up with a solution: moisture-enhanced or moisture-infused pork, where it’s pumped full of salty water to make up for the lack of flavour, and the lack of fat – with the beneficial side effect of making the meat heavier, so instead of just selling you meat, they’re also selling you water.

Don’t get me wrong. While we do a bunch of stuff on Australian pig farms that I don’t like, maybe those things would meet community expectations – if the community knew about them. But thanks to a less than open and accountable industry, most in the community aren’t aware of everything that is being done in their name.

Andrew Spencer, Australian Pork Limited’s CEO who is due to step down as this book goes to press, stated in the Australian Pork Newspaper in March 2016 – about the time I was trying to get access to our most intensive pig farms – that they ‘are not afraid of others seeing what we do’.

Well, I’m afraid Andrew, you were. Your farms still are. Your farmers are. Your vets are, and the mostly large companies that dominate the industry in Australia are.

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