{"id":1765,"date":"2020-01-29T18:44:52","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T00:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1765"},"modified":"2020-01-29T18:44:52","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T00:44:52","slug":"bringin-home-the-bacon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1765","title":{"rendered":"Bringin’ home the bacon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When\nI wrote about the possible dangers of having 40% fewer meat inspectors in pork\nslaughterhouses<\/a>, I didn\u2019t mean to cause such alarm among readers.  Just be sure to say grace before meals and\neverything should be okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\nmentioned, I still like my occasional bacon and baby back barbequed ribs.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One\nof my best memories is going out to the garden when I was young and picking\nsome fresh tomatoes for a homemade BLT. \nWhen I worked at Farmland Foods, the company would have an employee sale\nevery so often.  Each time, I purchased a\ncase (24) of 1-pound packages.  I froze\nmost of them, but gave a few packages to my mom and in-laws.  We never ran out of bacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\npast week I noticed that Target has Oscar Mayer Bacon on sale for \u201c2 for\n$11\u201d.  Yikes!  On sale? \nOh, for crying out loud!  Who\nwould want bacon that much?  I had to\nresearch to see if this is some sort of joke. \nIt\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nlot of what I have been reading lately points to higher bacon prices.  It will undoubtedly affect ham prices, as\nwell.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before\nthe Trump Administration increased tariffs on the Chinese, China had bought\nabout 60% of variety meats processed by American pork plants.  Variety meats include pigs\u2019 feet, pork hocks,\npig ears, etc.  The demand for variety\nmeats kept the value of other pork products at a reasonable price.  Because of the recent trade war between China\nand the U.S., Chinese consumers were less likely to buy those variety meats.  From my experience in the meat industry, that means\nthat a lot of cold storage plants in the U.S. are storing tons of variety meats\nthat cannot be sold as easily in American markets.  In order to offset the disparity in products\nsold and unsold, the value of bacon and ham are going to rise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior\nto the recent trade agreement, China\u2019s purchases of American livestock products\namounted to over $100 billion a year. \nSlapping a 25% tariff on those goods was a blow to this country\u2019s pork\nproducers.  At some point, if other\ncountries like Mexico, the second leading importer of U.S. pork products, do\nnot increase their importation of pork products, pork producers are going to\nhave to cut back on production.  That\ncould make the prices of bacon and ham in the U.S. rise even higher.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bacon\u2019s popularity has skyrocketed in the\npast few decades.  Fast-food restaurants\nhave discovered that bacon, cheese, and a hamburger naturally complement each\nother.  Des Moines has a Bacon Festival\nthat started in a bar with a few regular customers and morphed into a massive\nevent needing a convention center, all in a decade.  Like many instances, once a person or thing\nbecomes popular or rare, the costs go up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1943, a pound of bacon cost forty-three\ncents a pound.  Twelve years later, in\n1955, bacon was priced at 54\u00a2 per pound. \nIt didn\u2019t go over a dollar a pound until 1973 when the average price hit\n$1.16 per pound, thirty-two cents a pound higher than the previous year\u2019s\naverage of 84\u00a2 a pound.  1980\u2019s cost of\nbacon was a steady $1.48.  Bacon hit two\ndollars in 1986 when the average price per pound was $2.12.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere between 1973 and 1986 bacon\npicked up a bad reputation and its value dropped.  A study in the late 70s or early 80s\ndetermined that eating bacon caused cancer. \nI have a vivid memory of Dean Bowden, a product manager at Farmland\nFoods in Denison, coming into our work area, waving his hands, and yelling for\nus not to believe things we read in newspapers. \n\u201cIn order for you to get cancer from eating bacon you would have to eat\n90,000 lbs. a day\u201d to match the ratio of nitrates that those scientists gave to\nlab rats.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got to experience the process of making\nbacon first hand.  I was laid off during\nmy first year working in the pork plant. \nWithin a week (I didn\u2019t even get a chance to draw one unemployment\ninsurance check) I was called back to work the second shift.  The plant superintendent told me that he was\ngoing to make a pickle maker out of me. \nI thought of Vlasic, Gedney, and other brands of pickles, but didn\u2019t\nknow Farmland made them.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pickle is actually the brine that goes into\nbacon, ham, and other smoked meats.  I\nwas brought into a room with huge vats filled with water, and salt and sugar\nbags neatly stacked on pallets.  I was\ntaught in a matter of minutes how to prepare brine for hams and bacon.  The pickle I made was to be used that night\nby the second shift of employees pumping the brine into the pork bellies for\nbacon, and hams for smoking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A huge vat was filled with water.  A bag or so of salt was added; a portion of a\nbag of sugar, a small dose of sodium tripolyphosphate to help the meat retain\nmoisture, and two little bottles of a white substance with labels indicating\nthat each was approximately 10-20 grams \u2013 not even one ounce.  One of those bottles contained sodium\nnitrite, a preservative (anti-oxidant) and the supposed cause of cancer.  The other bottle contained sodium nitrate,\nalso an anti-oxidant that helps cured meats retain their color.  Sodium nitrate is naturally produced in\nphotosynthesis; sodium nitrite is synthetically made.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weight of the nitrites used in the process of bacon making are minuscule to the rest of the ingredients, and that includes the weight of the raw material \u2013 pork bellies.\u00a0 I had read a summary of one of the reports warning against nitrites in meat.\u00a0 Dean Bowden was right.\u00a0 The dose of nitrites given the rats was extremely out of proportion to the ratio of nitrite in pickle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bacon cancer scare must have occurred\nagain in 1988 and 1989 when a pound of bacon dropped back down below $2.00 per\npound.  It lasted only two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1990s saw bacon prices hold steady\nbetween two and three dollars a pound. \nThen came the 2000s.  $3.46 in\n2000; $3.60 in 2001; $4.13 in 2004; and $5.14 in 2011.  Wait a minute.  I was buying bacon in 2011 and I can\u2019t believe\nI bought it for that price. Well, I didn\u2019t. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting older means that you don\u2019t eat the\nsame things you ate as a teenager.  I\ndidn\u2019t eat much bacon since I no longer worked in the packinghouse and didn\u2019t\nparticipate in employee sales.  I ate\nbacon, but the bulk of that was in a restaurant, eating it as a guest at\nsomeone else\u2019s table, or finding it inexpensive at a huge meat sale.  Mostly, I avoided it.  I didn\u2019t eat breakfast.  I wasn\u2019t eating many BLTs in the summertime,\neither.  A few years ago, I picked up the\nyen for savory smoked bacon again. \nCancer be damned.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mature reasoning has led me to make sensible\npurchases.  I now buy bacon by the\nslice.  It\u2019s cheaper, it\u2019s easier to\nstore, you don\u2019t need the whole damned pound, anyway.  Besides, you\u2019ll find that slab bacon seems to\nbe meatier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know I\u2019m not going to pay $5.50 a pound\nfor Oscar Mayer bacon.  I need only 4\nslices at a time.  The counter person\nalways asks me what recipe I have where it calls for only 4 slices of\nbacon.  There\u2019s no particular recipe, you\nsee, 4 slices fit neatly in the pan.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I wrote about the possible dangers of having 40% fewer meat inspectors in pork slaughterhouses, I didn\u2019t mean to cause such alarm among readers.  Just be sure to say grace before meals and everything should be okay. As I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[700,701,696,697,698,699],"class_list":["post-1765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bacon","tag-dean-bowden","tag-farmland-foods","tag-oscar-mayer","tag-target","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1766,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions\/1766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}