Free-Range Trichinosis?

Ok, everyone once in a while the NYT crosses the line with its op-ed lineup from interesting perspectives not often considered by regular readers, to the typewritten equivalent of the infomercial.

James McWilliams piece on the 9th was one such piece of rubbish. Without delving too deeply into the numerous bits of flotsam and jetsam that McWilliams places in our path (I am sorry he won't try wild boar) lets reduce his argument to its little tiny nub. As he puts it:

IS free-range pork better and safer to eat than conventional pork? Many consumers think so. The well-publicized horrors of intensive pig farming have fostered the widespread assumption that, as one purveyor of free-range meats put it, “the health benefits are indisputable.” However, as yet another reminder that culinary wisdom is never conventional, scientists have found that free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites.

So here it is, the quality of life of pigs (and their flavor) is less important than eliminating a disease that is easily dealt with by cooking and engaging in safe food handling procedures. That's it. What is he defending? Industrial hog production. What does that give us? Well for starters, very unhealthy pigs. Now, I am not sure about McWilliams but as a child my parents kept a sow that we bred each year. Pigs (as opposed to wild boar) are a domesticated species. They seem to be at their happiest rooting, wallowing and being with other pigs. Pigs are perhaps the most intelligent of the barnyard animals (even exceeding horses- who I am told are roughly as smart as a 3 year old which explains many horse temper tantrums). Are they, and we, better off when instead of being free to do these things they are confined to small pens and subjected to so much stress that their systems are flooded with cortisol (to a point where some say that it affects the flavor of the meat). Also, what of the giant lagoons of pig shit that litter the Midwestern landscape? Perhaps those too are to be explained away by the bogyman of trichinosis.

The truth be told, it is long overdue that consumers take a good hard look at the meat (and everything else) in the supermarket and contemplate exactly how much fuel, toil and suffering is represented in a box of cheap bacon.

But let me be clear, this is not an argument for vegetarianism. I would only suggest that McWilliams and everyone else be willing to look that animal in the eye before you eat it. But the real hand tip about McWilliams' true agenda is revealed at the very end where we are promised that he is hard at work on a book about the terrible things that locovore movement will visit upon us.