I’ve got big balls
I’ve got big balls
And they’re such big balls
Dirty big balls
And he’s got big balls
And she’s got big balls
But we’ve got the biggest balls of them all
–with insinscere apologies to AC/DC

Meet Blackie. Well, at least the back end of Blackie. Blackie is a four-year-old, 750-pound Berkshire boar. And a good 10 pounds of that weight is right there, in the testicles.

Stan Schutte introduced me to Blackie when we stopped by his farm last week. I had expressed interest in this pig when Stan told me that after Blackie breeds with the sows this fall, it will be time for him to go meet his Maker. If I wanted the meat, Stan said, I could have it for free.

For free?! How can that be? Why would Stan be giving away the meat from a boar?

In addition to the loss of tenderness you get with a more mature and muscled animal, the main reason most people have never eaten boar and that you don’t see this meat in the market is “boar taint.”

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While it sounds like an exhortation in one of the Romance languages–like Mangia! or Mangiamo!–or like the refrain from a song–”MON-go-leet-sa, MON-go-leet-sa, mon amour!”–Mangalitsa is actually the name for an unusual hairy pig from southeastern Europe. This pig dates back to 1833, when they were bred on the farms of the Hungarian Archduke Jozsef. (Now that’s looking out for your people! If G. W. had done something with his life half as useful as this, I’d think much better of the guy.) Last year, my friend Kathy in Seattle turned me on to Wooly Pigs, the website for a company in Washington that has the only breeding stock for this pig in our part of the world.

While most pigs raised in the world today are “meat-types,” this is a relatively new development. Until the middle of the twentieth-century, “lard-types” predominated, as lard was the most important cooking fat until vegetable and other processed fats came along. (Can you say coconut and palm oils? Can you say “hydrogenated” and “trans fats”?  All of which turned out to be less healthy for us than good old lard.  I knew you could!) In the 1922 edition of Swine in America, F. D. Coburn reported,

Since about the beginning of the present century there has been much written and printed in advocacy of what the writers term ‘bacon’ hogs, and the importance if not necessity of giving more attention to their production and less to what are disparagingly designated a ‘lard’ hogs; extolling the higher prices and the virtues of lean pork and the superiority of the lean or non-fattening breeds and types, including Razor-Backs, all claimed as yielding the much-coveted streak of lean and streak of fat. The effect, however, of this propaganda has not been widespread in the United States… In America and the markets, in spite of proposed reforms, alleged demand, higher prices and imagined competition, the type and style of hog that for decades has been a food reliance for the millions, the ‘lard’ hog of the corn belt, still not only occupies the stage, but fills it. (23)

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No, I’m not talking about the blurry vision, the chills, shakes, and sweats that I get when a barbecued pork shoulder is finally ready to take out of the smoker.

I’m talking about the “swine flu” outbreak in the news, although the World Health Organization has just decreed that since the new flu virus contains human and avian genes as well as pig, and since the new strain has not yet been found in pigs, it would be more accurate to call it the “North American flu.”

Still, there is significant evidence tying the new virus to pigs and factory farms raising them.

After months of increasing health problems, on April 6, health officials in the Mexican state of Veracruz declared a health alert due to an outbreak of acute respiratory illness in the town of La Gloria, in the municipality of Perote. This “strange” outbreak affected 60% of the town’s 3000 residents. According to the Biosurveillance website

Residents believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to “flu.” However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms. It was unclear whether health officials had identified a suspected pathogen responsible for this outbreak.

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