The Case for Pork

From the "things that don't sound true to me" file, Ezra Klein reports some data that suggests that replacing beef consumption with pork consumption could have some dramatic environmental benefits.

Relatedly, I was in Baltimore yesterday at the Lexington Market where they had this odd kind of pan-ethnic deli, selling pastrami, "Jewish salami," etc. like a kosher deli but also featuring tons of Italian pork-based cured meats. Kosher deli is a good thing, and so is salumi but the combination is weird. Point being -- less pastrami and more ham = a healthier environment.

Comments

If you were at Lexington Market purchasing treyf and you didn't get a Faidley's crabcake, you made a terrible error.

Posted by JSE | July 13, 2008 1:24 PM

I've often seen arguments that the economic / ecological appeal for pork production among so many poor peoples throughout the world include that pigs can quite efficiently root for themselves and are highly efficient at turning food into pork. The same factors worked in rural China as rural North Carolina.

Throughout the U.S. South, pigs were traditionally allowed to run loose in the forests as many could not afford to pen and feed them, and therefore the once or twice a year hunting, slaughter, and putting up of a pig or a few pigs and pork products was a large part of poor family economics.

Cow ranching for non-dairy purposes tends to be quite a labor & resource intense operation, and didn't really kick into the mass American diet until refrigerated train cars could carry fresh beef from the giant stockyards. Or so says what I've stumbled across.

Posted by El Cid | July 13, 2008 1:33 PM

I'm honestly surprised that the pig's far greater efficiency than the cow is a mystery to Matt and Ezra. I thought it was a pretty widely known fact.

There have been some interesting books written on the struggle between the pig and cow for food supremacy in late 19th century America, and how the cow won due to more successful governmental and industrial corruption by the cow producers.

Posted by Petey | July 13, 2008 1:38 PM

I'm glad to hear ham is better for the environment. Any word on the carbon footprint of rye bread and pepper jack cheese?

Posted by Roddy McCorley | July 13, 2008 1:42 PM

Ditto on the Faidley's crabcake. If you want deli food, go to Attman's on Lombard.

Posted by Jon Parker | July 13, 2008 1:44 PM

Petey: Sorry, but this is not an occasion to re-insinuate trustfundscumbag otra vez.

I was not aware of these efficiency questions, overall, until I encountered them, or was prompted to think about them. I may have grown up in the fairly rural South, but I didn't farm or raise livestock.

And industrial pork production as practiced in the crap lagoon-producing fright-houses of the U.S. are not related to idyllic recollections of pigs let loose in woods.

Posted by El Cid | July 13, 2008 1:47 PM

The relative energy efficiency of cows vs. pigs really depends on the environment you're raising them in. In humid and productive environments, pigs can find enough tubers, nuts and so forth to eat, and their superior inherent metabolic efficiency can come into play. In drier, grassland environments, pigs can't really forage very well (they are not ruminants and not built to thrive off grass) and in order to survive they need to be fed "human" food like grain or peanuts which make them much less efficient.

Of course you can feed both cows and pigs by shipping in material from elsewhere (hay, grain, and so forth) but that automatically causes a big hit in terms of energy efficiency.

There are good reasons that some parts of the world like East Africa are traditional "cow cultures", and other parts like Melanesia are traditional pig cultures, and still other environments are sheep/goat raising cultures.

Posted by Hector | July 13, 2008 1:56 PM

For example, in the part of Africa where I worked for three years, pigs were definitely _not_ very energy efficient since they couldn't forage particularly well, and some of the few things they could really forage on were a) other people's crops, and b) wild tubers that were more important as human food. There weren't many people raising pigs and it was a relatively expensive type of meat. The wild African Bushpigs on the other hand were excellent foragers and were good eating- tasty and much less fatty than pork.

Posted by Hector | July 13, 2008 2:05 PM

"And industrial pork production as practiced in the crap lagoon-producing fright-houses of the U.S. are not related to idyllic recollections of pigs let loose in woods."

No doubt. Large scale pig factories are terrifying.

My point was more limited, that I'm surprised that the wide efficiency advantage pigs have over cows in turning grain into animal protein is not as widely known as I would have guessed.

Posted by Petey | July 13, 2008 2:11 PM

Industrial pork production is atrocious.

In Missouri, it is illegal to even photograph one of these warehouse/slaughterhouses.

More traditional hog farming where they root graze on field leavings, acorns, peanuts, etc. are not as profitable as the industrial farms.

They are, however, more efficient (as noted above) and much better for the environment than non-dairy cow farms.

Posted by John B | July 13, 2008 2:27 PM

Hector: But didn't the cattle (and / or frequently goat or sheep) culturers tend to emphasize dairy (or occasional bloodletting) and breedstock production over primarily meat production, rather than meat as a secondary product of a larger livestock system? That seems to drastically change the efficiency outlook.

Posted by El Cid | July 13, 2008 2:32 PM

Or we could stop complaining about others (BushCo, etc.) and start leading ethical, progressive lives ourselves.

Really, how can we claim to be good people working for a better world when we pay people to brutalize our fellow creatures simply because we're used to the taste of their flesh?

"People have an infinite capacity to rationalize, especially when it comes to something they want to eat." -Cleveland Amory

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | July 13, 2008 2:37 PM

"They are, however, more efficient (as noted above) and much better for the environment than non-dairy cow farms."

I'm not sure the latter is a safe conclusion to jump to.

Given the pig's efficiency advantages over the cow in converting grain into animal protein, pigs likely have a lower carbon footprint than cows. But pigs may still be more of nightmare to the local environment than cows even while having less climate impact.

And other factors obviously come into play in calculating carbon footprint than the efficiency of the animal, so even the pig's carbon advantage isn't a sure thing.

Posted by Petey | July 13, 2008 2:50 PM

"Really, how can we claim to be good people working for a better world when we pay people to brutalize our fellow creatures simply because we're used to the taste of their flesh?"

Maybe because we don't agree that the one has anything to do with the other?

Posted by mad6798 | July 13, 2008 3:51 PM

El Cid,

If you're saying that the cost/benefit analysis of cows vs. pigs have to take into account that there are many benefits of cows beyond just the meat, that's a very good point. I believe that East Africans and possibly some northern Europeans grew cows largely for dairy purposes, while in China and India their primary value was as a beast of burden. (I think that in southern Africa they were primarily a meat animal but I could be wrong).

However, it's still true that there are many areas of the world where raising pigs is just not a resource-efficient activity. If it made sense to raise pigs in, say, the highlands of East Africa or Central Asia or the Middle East, then people would have done it _in addition to_ raising ruminants.

Pigs work well in productive woodland environments when there are enough wild forest products (tubers, fruits, nuts, etc.) that aren't valued for human consumption. They also work well as an adjunct to a highly productive agriculture system- they may compete for humans for the sweet potatoes, corn, apples, or peanuts but if you are growing enough of these to have a large surplus it doesn't matter if you feed it to pigs. They don't work so well where there aren't many wild tubers or nuts around and where the agricultural system is not highly productive.

In other words, yes feeding corn to pigs is much more efficient than feeding it to cows, and if we're going to have intensive livestock production then better it be pigs than cows. But in a place like, say, Kansas, the best choice would probably be to allow land to revert to pasture and produce grass fed beef, rather than raising corn to feed to pigs.

Posted by Hector | July 13, 2008 3:55 PM

Really, how can we claim to be good people working for a better world when we pay people to brutalize our fellow creatures simply because we're used to the taste of their flesh?

Because some of us recognize that we've got a set of omnivore's teeth and a digestive system that can process animal protein and decide to use it?

Posted by KeithM | July 13, 2008 4:07 PM

Hector: I'm not advocating 'for' pork production or anything similar. I was just noting that it seems to me that large-scale ranching of cattle for primarily meat production is something outside the typical range of ecologically-influenced livestock patterns.

Grass-grazing livestock is a very common pattern in history, yes, and I'm pretty sure from what I've seen that the production of beef as meat itself wasn't the primary use of U.S. cattle herds -- and there were plenty of grass-feeding cattle herds -- until the development of the rail system and refrigerated cars, and even then it took decades until beef consumption rivaled that of pork here.

But, no, I'm not one of this blog's ritual monomanics.

Posted by El Cid | July 13, 2008 4:14 PM

I believe now is a good time to remind everyone that the pig is, in fact, a wonderful, magical animal.

Lisa: I'm going to become a vegetarian.
Homer: Does that mean you're not going to eat any pork?
Lisa: Yes.
Home: Bacon?
Lisa: Yes Dad.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: Dad all those meats come from the same animal.
Homer: Right Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!

Posted by tom.a | July 13, 2008 4:20 PM

The minute I finish my pastrami sandwich I have to read this post!

I am regularly amused that the animals I see in fields locally (sheep, goats, llamas and alpacas, buffalo -- there being very few cows in this part of Oregon) are all "non-native." An occasional deer constitutes the only exception.

My understanding is that the origins of the California beef industry were an effort to find something to do with the meat that was a byproduct of the valuable parts of the cow, hides and tallow.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | July 13, 2008 4:21 PM

"Really, how can we claim to be good people working for a better world when we pay people to brutalize our fellow creatures simply because we're used to the taste of their flesh?"

Because without eating our relatives, human life is impossible.

If you feel a closer kinship with our animal relatives than with our plant relatives, well, you ought to understand that's a difference of degree, not kind.

We're chimps, not angels. We eat.

Posted by Petey | July 13, 2008 4:24 PM

"Point being -- less pastrami and more ham = a healthier environment."

We also need to reject "pickle barrel" politics . . .

Also, just wanted to say - Hector, I tend to disagree with you, but your comments on this post were downright useful.

(re: wild african bush pigs, and such - one thing that I'm always hopeful about is using either traditional (or new) breeds or domesticating/crossing wild ones of livestock (well, also crops) in ways that provide a better, less resource intensive 'fit' with local ecologies . . .

Posted by Dan S. | July 13, 2008 4:51 PM

Like all things, pigs may be more environmentally-friendly, but only if done in the right way. I can tell you many of Indiana's rivers and streams are little better than raw sewage thanks to giant ponds of pig shit that overflow at the slightest bit of rain.

Posted by Jeremy | July 13, 2008 6:43 PM

Pig farm lagoons are pretty gross, but let's be honest - your shit winds up in a lagoon too, it's just usually underground or covered. And then the water is reclaimed and you drink it.

Posted by Chet | July 13, 2008 9:19 PM

By the way, is anyone familiar with the new sport of pig racing? Seems to be pretty popular on the country fair circuit. No jockies (unlike the kids on sheep), but they wear cute little saddle blankets and actually race over hurdles.

I have a picture I cut out of the newspaper a couple of years ago but not way to link to anything on the web. Suppose that shoots my credibility.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | July 13, 2008 11:46 PM

"Pig farm lagoons are pretty gross, but let's be honest - your shit winds up in a lagoon too, it's just usually underground or covered. And then the water is reclaimed and you drink it."

Yes, but hopefully it doesn't overflow in rain and pollute the waterways. There's gotta be a better way.

Fun shit fact: Tokyo produces enough sewage to fill the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium four times over. Daily.

Posted by Jeremy | July 14, 2008 3:05 AM

Dan S.,

Glad I was able to help.

Re: (re: wild african bush pigs, and such - one thing that I'm always hopeful about is using either traditional (or new) breeds or domesticating/crossing wild ones of livestock (well, also crops) in ways that provide a better, less resource intensive 'fit' with local ecologies.

This is what my graduate research focuses on...I won't give too many details so as to preserve my anonymity, but it involves perennial grasses.

Hybridizing animals is generally tougher than with plants. Bush pigs though may have been domesticated or semi-domesticated in the past, there is some debate about this in the anthropological literature. (For example it's not clear if they were introduced to Madagascar by humans or made it across on their own). It would appear that African people gave up the attempt when they came into contact with domestic pigs which were easier to raise. Bush pigs have been reared in captivity though, and like deer in the U.S. are a common agricultural pest- one of the few African large mammals to actually be increasing in numbers currently.

There are some interesting attempts in Africa and Latin America currently to domesticate some wild rodents and reptiles as more efficient food sources. (Cold blooded animals are often more efficient converters of plant matter into meat since they have a lower metabolic rate). And of course several different species of wild "cattle" have been domesticated in Asia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushpig

Posted by Hector | July 14, 2008 8:38 AM

i can't speak for pork, but i know for a fact that you can save more water by not eating a pound of beef than by not showering for a year.

Posted by environment lover | July 16, 2008 7:51 PM