Wild Pig Chase

I read an article recently that told me about a new-to-me (yet very old indeed) beer delivery style called firkins. It turns out Pipers Pub in Pittsburgh, a Scottish ale house on the Southside, serves Scotch eggs and dishes out ale pumped from firkins. I got really excited for both the beer and the sausage-covered eggs.

And then I remembered I'm not eating just any sausage anymore. I'm only eating pastured pork sausage, mostly from my freezer. I emailed Drew from the pub to see if he could tell me whence his sausage came. Thus began a chase that I followed most of the afternoon. What better fun when I have work to do instead?

My first stop was the sausage supplier in Erie, PA, where Drew told me Piper's purchases pork. I phoned them to ask about their pigs, the diet of their pigs, and where the pigs live.

They don't have any pigs. A smoker-cough woman transferred me to the meat facility, where another smoker-cough lady informed me that they just package the meat and ship it to restaurants. They actually procure their meat from a number of different sources.

Smoke lady wouldn't give me the names of these companies, but was begrudgingly willing to phone some of them if I could better explain what I was trying to figure out and if I told her how many pounds of sausage I needed to order.

I sighed, and realized it's a lot harder to trace the origins of an animal than I thought. Poor Drew might have thought he was buying PA pigs for Pipers. Little did he know his pork paraded in from all over the place. Michael Pollan was right: it's darn near impossible to trace our meals back to the ground it grew from.

Imagine all the hands involved in one Scotch egg from Pipers Pub? Countless pork farms raising hogs, sending them to numerous slaughter houses, who send the meat to various packaging companies, who ship it to distributors, who sell it to restaurants. It was starting to make my mind explode.

I emailed Drew to tell him about the chase and was surprised to get this email in response:
I will see what I can find out. It might take some time but I am curious to find out for myself.

I don't know about you, but I am heartened by his interest in his meat suppliers. So my pig chase left me with both hope and gloom. Sadness that the way things operate seem so complex, it's impossible to feel connected to the food that fuels me. But hope because other people care about these things, too.

Maybe Drew, as an actual sausage purchaser, will have more luck from the smoke-lady.