Farmer Julia's Blog

We get a lot of questions about nitrates and requests for "nitrite free" bacon. There is a lot of fear and misinformation out there where this subject is concerned and it is tempting to just jump on the "nitrite free" marketing bandwagon. But the science just doesn't support it and we've decided to stand by our principles of transparency and consumer education on this one. So without further ado, here are the basic facts and as usual, we will leave it to you to make an educated choice:

It's official! We've just bought 21 beautiful acres in the Nicola Valley. Don't worry, we'll be hanging on to the farm in Burnaby too. We just needed some room to grow and a better climate for raising pigs year round. The new place is located 3 hours from the Burnaby farm just west of Merritt. This is a great location for us as it is close enough to make a trip back and forth every week, has FAR less rainfall but lots of ground water and you can buy 21 acres of land for less than half the price of a condo in Greater Vancouver. 

Seems like everyone is selling "local, sustainable, ethical" meat these days. It's big business and even companies like Walmart and McDonalds are cashing in on consumer demand for products that are produced using methods that take issues like animal welfare and the environmental into consideration. There are all kinds of certification and labeling systems designed, in theory, to bridge the gap between production methods and consumer knowledge. But for all these efforts, the waters just seem to be getting muddier and muddier and increasingly, words like "local, sustainable and ethical" are being diluted to the point where they don't mean much any more.

Just in time for Halloween, The Lancet published a scary article entitled "Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat" in which World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced there is "convincing evidence" that the consumption of processed and red meat increases the risk of cancer in humans. Much side taking, told-you-so-ing, panic, media sensationalism and general freak out ensued but as is usually the case with these sorts of things, cooler heads have begun to prevail now that sensible folks have had a chance to look at the facts. 

One of the best things about well-raised, well-fed heritage pork is the fat. Pigs have a unique ability to recover fats from the food they consume and store them in their own fat without altering the original molecular structure of the fat. This is why some farmers "finish" pigs on apples, hazelnuts, and other tasty things. The flavour from the fruit and nuts is transferred on to the meat through the fat. Fear of fat, coupled with the drive of the industrial farming system to produce more for less, has left us with the anemic, tasteless version of this once noble meat that passes for pork in most grocery stores and butcher shops these days.