@launderess:
You said: "The real sad thing is in the USA, UK and EU many of the best older breeds of hog/pigs have gone extinct. So much breeding has gone on to produce a pig that meets supermarket quality, that porkers our grandparents, great grandparents and so forth knew are long gone. How they probably would leff at what we call bacon today."
While your notion is romantic, it's not realistic. There's more sleight-of-hand meat marketing going on now, thanks to the Food Channel, the interwebs and crafty beef marketing campaigns by the Angus producers than there is actual good information.
There are shrewd marketers trying to sell, "Berkshire pork" for $12/lb by mail. That's silly. There is more factory-brined Hormel pork in East Coast supermarkets giving real pork a bad name and taste than there is to be gained buying "Artisianal Pork" because someone saw someone on TV cook it. Quit buying prepackaged "Always Tender" Hormel pork. Quit buying decent pork and brining it with salt and sugar because some attractive but idiotic "chef" on the Food Network says you're supposed to, because they don't have the kitchen skills to cook a lean cut of pork without drying it out and turning it into a boot sole.
There are loads of TV ads, and signs in supermarkets proclaiming the superiority of "100% Angus beef." The only thing superior about Angus beef is the marketing effort carried out by the Angus producers' association.
I will guarantee you that no one here could tell the difference between a steak cut from an Angus, or a Limousin, or a Charolais, or a Hereford, or even a Simmental. There are some structural differences between these breeds, but the only way to identify those would be seeing a whole side of beef, since the breeds vary in width-to-height ratios, and even that would take a trained eye. And besides that, beef producers aren't like dog breeders, they mix and match what they have for economy, finished characteristics and behavior in the fields.
Most people on the coasts don't realize that there are different breeds of cows optimized for for different characteristics, like dairy production, e.g. Guernseys. But they are the first ones to wail about, "corporate farming" as if some big corporation owns all our production. I guess if a person sees a special on Channel 239 with Willie Nelson, Dave Matthews and Wilco about corporate farming, then everyone in the midwest is just a corporate pawn.
The whole, "this breed is better than that" claim is nonsense and tends to come from the people furthest removed from production. Why that is, I don't know. I don't claim to know that much about seafood, even though I live as far away from the Atlantic as the people who prattle on about their beef and pork expertise live from where cattle and hogs are actually raised.
Sorry for the rant, and I hope you don't think this is directed at you personally, but there is so much misinformation about beef, pork, corn and soybeans out there these days that I have to shoot my mouth off sometimes.
p.s. Trichinosis hasn't been a problem in U.S. pork production since the 1920s. There's a lot more potential for public health problems with the dum-dums that are promoting raw milk production than ever came from pork.
