[FlyOverZone]

I've listened to some pasture Pig Farmers talk proudly about not feeding their pigs "Animal by-products". I don't get it. Aren't pigs omnivores? Even if you're not feeding pigs animal by-products, aren't they eating animals in the field? A mouse, rat, rabbit, bird, chicken eggs, etc, the pig may come across in the pasture? What's the big deal about not feeding your pig part of the natural diet of an omnivore? Or am I just simply misunderstanding the phrase "animal by-products"?

 

[Bearfootfarm]

What's the big deal about not feeding your pig part of the natural diet of an omnivore?

It can spread some diseases and often doesn't add much nutritional value.
Feathers are "animal by-products" that add bulk but not much more.

 

[Wanda]

''Buzz words'' to sell a product or lifestyle. A pigs digestive system is like ours, and is set up to enjoy many different sources of nutrition.

 

[haypoint]

Some eggs are marketed as "Vegetarian", but anyone that has free range knows chickens aren't vegetarians.
Most people have co ncerns over their food. Most people cannot research every food ingredient. They depend on what they think the words mean. Food producers capitalize on this by inventing words that seem to be good or better.
Stores can increase sales by marketing their meat as "pasture raised", but that is meaningless. Adding "hormone-free" on chicken creates the false belief that some chickens are fed hormones. Not true. But it sells product.
Few people know that makeup and lipstick comes from piles of animal guts, hooves and hide. All by-products.
Because of "Mad Cow", BSE, cow, goat and sheep by-products are not added to cattle feed. But millions of pounds of animal byproducts are added to other feed.
Rendering plants collect guts, bones, used cooking oils, trimmed fat, hooves. Thee oils are made into bio-diesel. The hard fats to cosmetics. The rest is ground and cooked into a product that looks like greasy coffee grounds. It is tested for contaminates and then added to livestock feed.
When you buy pet food that says beef, chicken or pork, do you really think it is ground rump roast, chicken breast or pork loin? Spleen from a cow is beef, feathers from a hen is chicken and pig lungs are pork.
I see lots of so called livestock feed that has for the primary ingredient "grain by-products". That's not grain, folks. That's almost grain.

 

[COWS]

Look up the ingredients that go into wieners and bologna sometime.

COWS

 

[doc-]

Look up the ingredients that go into wieners and bologna sometime.

COWS

Sometimes? Hot dogs & baloney are just lips and other sphincters in a casing....but not to worry-- bacteria are an excellent source of B vitamins.

[Oh, wait. I just re-read your post-- "sometime look up," not "sometimes goes into.." Never mind.]

 

[4tu]

Hogs have eaten anything that falls into the pens and their own. I have seen chickens eat snakes, lizards and kill and eat baby chicks other chickens eggs and just about anything they can nibble a piece off of.

Tempest in a tea pot I recall some of the arctic explorers ate their shoe tongues and sled dogs and I am sure the lashings.

Chitterlings are guts and natural casings.

 

[barnbilder]

The big thing with pigs is trichinosis. Eating animals infected with trichinosis will cause your pork to need cooking. Most of the general populace can't be trusted to cook their pork before eating it, so "animal by-product free" adds an extra layer of food safety in some people's minds. The reality is that mice and rats are huge trichinosis carriers, and there really is no guarantee that infected rat or mouse parts won't end up in hog feed no matter what type of operation it is.

 

[Hiro]

The big thing with pigs is trichinosis. Eating animals infected with trichinosis will cause your pork to need cooking. Most of the general populace can't be trusted to cook their pork before eating it, so "animal by-product free" adds an extra layer of food safety in some people's minds. The reality is that mice and rats are huge trichinosis carriers, and there really is no guarantee that infected rat or mouse parts won't end up in hog feed no matter what type of operation it is.

Trichinosis? Really? That hasn't been a problem to even be in the back of the most paranoid food safety person in the US in 40 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmWr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6401a1.htm

 

[haypoint]

The big thing with pigs is trichinosis. Eating animals infected with trichinosis will cause your pork to need cooking. Most of the general populace can't be trusted to cook their pork before eating it, so "animal by-product free" adds an extra layer of food safety in some people's minds. The reality is that mice and rats are huge trichinosis carriers, and there really is no guarantee that infected rat or mouse parts won't end up in hog feed no matter what type of operation it is.

"How common is trichinosis in the US?
Humans may be infected by eating the meat of infected domestic pigs, wild bears, wild pigs, or walruses. Over the last decade, between 100 and 150 human cases per year are reported in the United States. ... An estimated 10 to 15 million people in the United States have been infected with trichinosis."
Animal by products in commercial feeds have been cooked and pose no bacterial or trichinosis threat. Pasture raised pork would be subjected to far more trichinosis threat than most confined hogs.

 

[big rockpile]

Our Conservation Department is trying to say Feral Hogs are uneatable. So people won't hunt them. Thing is people including me have ate them for years.

big rockpile

 

[barnbilder]

Trichinosis is pretty prevalent in rats and mice. No rats and mice ever hang around where feed is stored, and hogs would immediately spit out a piece of mouse that got chopped up in a grain auger, so I guess you can assume you are OK.

 

[doc-]

The big thing with pigs is trichinosis. Eating animals infected with trichinosis will cause your pork to need cooking. Most of the general populace can't be trusted to cook their pork before eating it, so "animal by-product free" adds an extra layer of food safety in some people's minds. The reality is that mice and rats are huge trichinosis carriers, and there really is no guarantee that infected rat or mouse parts won't end up in hog feed no matter what type of operation it is.

Important info (just in case you're ever going to be a contestant on "Jeopardy")--Julius Caesar suffered from epilepsy- but not until after he got back from Egypt where he ate a lot of pork. He probably contacted Trichinosis there, which often forms cysts in the brain, causing seizures..... I wonder if irreverent school boys starting calling him Julius Seizure?

 

[HermitJohn]

Our Conservation Department is trying to say Feral Hogs are uneatable. So people won't hunt them. Thing is people including me have ate them for years.

big rockpile

Unless they have been poisoned, drugged, or have been eating in a contaminated soil site, I would say they are more healthy to eat than confinement raised hogs fed factory processed food. They are what hog was intended to be. Nature is feral. Feral just isnt nearly as profitable to the money people.

 

[haypoint]

Our Conservation Department is trying to say Feral Hogs are uneatable. So people won't hunt them. Thing is people including me have ate them for years.

big rockpile

In Michigan, Department of Natural Resources wants every hunter to shoot them on sight. But they are hard to find. They feed at night, doing crop damage and eroding rivers and streams. Then hide during the day. I have seen hunters set up on the edge of a corn field at harvest, shooting hogs as they escape their corn stalk cover.

 

[haypoint]

Unless they have been poisoned, drugged, or have been eating in a contaminated soil site, I would say they are more healthy to eat than confinement raised hogs fed factory processed food. They are what hog was intended to be. Nature is feral. Feral just isnt nearly as profitable to the money people.

Not true. The government spent millions testing and eradicating hogs for psudorabies, 30 years ago. Thankfully, psudorabies no longer exists in commercial hogs. But it does exist in feral hogs. Wild hogs carry a variety of parasites, uncommon in commercial hogs. Trichinosis is uncommon in commercial pork, common in wild hogs.
If you had seen a wild hog pull its gooey head out of the rib cage of a maggot filled road kill, you might prefer pork from a hog fed ground soybeans and ground corn, stored, ground, mixed and delivered in metal, vermin-free containers.

 

[barnbilder]

My feral chickens taste way better than commercial poultry on a diet that includes maggoty roadkill. The wild or heritage woods raised pork I have eaten has all been better than commercial cardboard, I mean pork. Of course, we always fed old boars to the dogs and ate sows or young pigs. Sometimes we cut one and turned him back loose. If you could bay one of those the next year it was some dang fine eating.

It may come as news to some, but actually cooking your meat can kill pathogens in it. So you can actually take wild pork, or milk that has been harvested by illegal immigrants that dropped the inflations in manure and didn't spot a mastitic cow in the string, and you can cook that and make it safe for human consumption.

As a pest control professional, I can tell you that there is no such thing as a vermin free container. It is still probably a good idea to cook pork from a grocery store. They really ought to consider purposefully infecting commercial hogs with trichinosis. Charlie Darwin needs a lot of help these days from the looks of things. I understand why the commercial hog industry is trying to promote the idea that their product is trichinosis free. Cooking their inferior product to trichinosis safe temperatures renders a near flavorless substance to a tough and flavorless substance.

 

[Oxankle]

When I hunted wild hogs on timber company land in SE Oklahoma I learned that it was common for the locals to trap young pigs, castrate the males and turn them loose to grow another year. They really took offense if outsiders hunted on "their" land.

 

[FlyOverZone]

"How common is trichinosis in the US?
Humans may be infected by eating the meat of infected domestic pigs, wild bears, wild pigs, or walruses. Over the last decade, between 100 and 150 human cases per year are reported in the United States. ... An estimated 10 to 15 million people in the United States have been infected with trichinosis."
Animal by products in commercial feeds have been cooked and pose no bacterial or trichinosis threat. Pasture raised pork would be subjected to far more trichinosis threat than most confined hogs.

This sounds like factory farm promoted propaganda

 

[muleskinner2]

At my house, animal bi-products are food. That would be meat, milk, butter, chicken, cheese, and all of the other things they told us to eat when we were kids.