Savannas and Sausages

Healthy ecosystems produce better-tasting bacon

breakfast buffet. He had a sausage link wiggling on the end of his fork and was smelling it with a foul look on his face. “Take a deep breath!” he said. “That’s the smell of industrial pork production. You can smell the manure!” I wrinkled my nose at him as if to dismiss his idiocy, then took a whiff of the sausage. Sure enough! The aroma was unmistakable. Will continued to pontificate as he drew a crowd. I slunk away to eat my breakfast, not as excited as before.

As I ate, (yes, I still ate the sausage even after Will’s buzzkill) and I tasted all of the aromatics faithfully preserved in that miracle of nature, pork fat (it doesn’t lie!), I remembered the dozens of times I’ve watched a pig flop down under the shade of a chestnut tree, belly-up, legs twitching, snout covered with drool-covered crumbs, while cicadas buzzed overhead and the wind danced through the tall grass. That, right there, is a picture of livestock health. It’s not something you maintain with a needle or with a log on a spreadsheet. It’s not a number on a carcass yield chart or a production goal in a confinement barn. It’s health that shows up in the gleam of a cow’s coat and the richness of the cream in your coffee. It’s the strength in a pig’s stride as it systematically roots for grubs. It’s the vibrant orange yolk of a chicken’s egg still warm from the nest. 

Health is what happens when animals are raised as part of living ecosystems, rather than lifeless confinement rectangles of misery. You can smell it. You can taste it. It’s the scent of dew on the morning grass, acorns crunching underfoot — the taste of a crisp apple on a bright blue day and the sizzle of thick-cut, pasture-raised bacon on a cast-iron skillet. That, my friend, is what real food smells like.