Pigging Out on Beef

Or is it, Beefing out on Pig?

Okay, okay, this is going to seem a little crazy in places but just stick with me.

Conservatives have been lied to a lot by the legacy media, so it’s hard to believe “climate change”—which was “global warming” until they got scared it wasn’t warming—is real. Especially human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change. Remember, we had an ice age about an hour ago in geologic times, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s getting somewhat warmer, if it is. And it’s unlikely we can do much to change it, since compared to us, the Earth is really big.

However, these people are going to push for things that they believe will moderate or reverse global warming whether they work or not. And one of these is a big push for everyone either going vegetarian or eating bugs as their main source of protein.

Eccch. Most people probably won’t be going there. So in order to give these people the lower greenhouse gas emissions they demand while still allowing us to chow down on meat, I have a suggestion.

Make pork taste like beef.

It’s clear that Americans and most people worldwide prefer beef as a source of protein—if they can afford it. There’s very little ham in hamburgers—in fact, none. People eat less beef than they used to, but they also eat less pork.

A website called Our World in Data shows how much Americans prefer beef. In 1970, when people could afford it, the average American ate 115 pounds of beef a year, but just 55 pounds of pork and 48 pounds of poultry, mostly chicken.

Today it’s 116 pounds of poultry, 65 pounds of pork and 83 pounds of beef. People still like the flavor of beef even if it’s relatively expensive.

Back in 1970, ground beef was 59 cents a pound. No wonder people ate so much of it. Now chicken is cheaper by far than beef, and so is pork.

The global-warming crowd hates cattle because they are ruminants. Cows can digest grass because they have several stomachs designed to do that. The problem is, in digesting all that greenery, they burp and fart a lot of methane, a far worse greenhouse gas than just plain carbon dioxide (more than 20 times worse). All the cattle in the world turn out an estimated 700 million metric tons of methane each year, considered quite a burden on the environment.

In addition, cows aren’t very efficient producers of meat. Give a chicken a bit less than two pounds of feed and it gains a pound. Give a pig four pounds of feed and it puts on a pound. But it takes cows a full seven pounds of feed to add that same pound to their weight.

Also, cows aren’t great at reproducing. A cow takes nine months to have a calf, same gestation period as a human. And they usually have just one calf, occasionally twins, but no more. Beef ranchers need patience and lots of grazing room.

Hogs, on the other hand, are really good at producing piglets. The gestation period for a sow is three months, three weeks and three days—just under four months—and a typical sow turns out seven to fifteen piglets in that time. And she can do it twice a year. As one website notes, “With a lifespan of 12 years, one sow has the potential to produce over 300 pigs.” That’s certainly nothing to oink at.

Even better, pigs aren’t ruminants, so they don’t re-chew their food and produce methane while doing it. Their greenhouse gas emissions are a fraction of that for cattle. Yes, they do produce lots of poop, which itself produces nitrous oxides, but it’s not nearly the threat that methane is.

There are a lot of startups burning through a lot of venture capital trying to make synthetic meat, but what they’ve given the world so far doesn’t taste much like the real thing and costs hundreds to thousands of dollars per pound.

My theory is that you should start with something that already produces meat and just modify it enough to change the taste. In recent years scientists have modified pigs enough so their hearts can be transplanted into humans without being rejected; certainly someone could take a shot at making pork taste more like beef.

It would be nice if a pork chop tasted exactly like a New York Strip, but people would be willing to try something that only got partway to perfection. After all, they’re used to eating pork, ham and bacon, so the idea of eating hog meat that simply tastes a little different shouldn’t scare them off.

I even got a name for the new meat. It’s not cow and it’s not pig, so I’d combine them and call it Ka-Pow.

Well, it’s better than faking crab and calling it Krab. At least I think so.