Waste Not, Want Not.

In July of 2010, Christien Meindertsma gave a thought-provoking speech about her three years of research and studies following a pig, "05049" to investigate and explore where all of the parts of the pig ended up - besides being meat on a plate. Her talk highlights some of the interesting products that contain pig parts - from soap to beer, to frozen meat to ammunition to heart valves to renewable energy. In her book, she reveals the 185 products that come from this one pig, 05049.

Being surrounded by cured meat in Emilia Romagna, and in Italy in general, and then furthermore in our trip to Spain, I found the talk very provocative, especially when taken into consideration all of our other courses we've had throughout the year about sustainability, the environment, poverty, food policies and regulations, etc. On the one hand, using all the parts of the pig is very practical, very logical, very sustainable. On the other hand, we are blindly supporting industries that we may not want to.

I've tried to take a more vegetarian approach to my diet, more out of environmental considerations (global livestock accounts for nearly 30% of methane emissions, take up a lot of land that could be used for other purposes to feed the hungry, the amount of water they require) than nutritional or ethical reasons. But I do love a juicy rare filet steak, will try the ox tail and am surprisingly not sick of all the cured meat we've been exposed to over these last couple months. And now, despite my love for cheese, I can't help but think about how cheese is connected to the meat industry (granted some of the milk used for artisinal cheeses isn't coming from the huge livestock facilities). We've learned about the different cuts of meat that come from a pig, how salamis are mixes of meats and lards, the intestines/colons/rectums are used as casings, the skin is included in meats like mortadella....but we never heard about where the rest of the pig goes to. never thought to question it. It's fascinating to think how little we know about our food and even where our every day products come from. I wonder where all those leftover cow parts go....