Saving the Mulefoot Pig
Mike Sula over at Chicago Reader has a must-read series on Blanchardville, WI farmers Linda Derrickson and MarkKessenich and their efforts to save the dwindling population of mulefoot pigs by raising them for food on their 154-acre Hillspring Farm. Says Derrickson:
“If you treat them just like precious zoo animals that’s how they get extinct….That does not create enough farmers raising them. Farmers have to see some kind of monetary incentive to really do it on a scale that preserves these breeds.”
According to Sula’s report, there are fewer than 300 registered purebred mulefoots alive today. But, just as consumer demand for specialty produce has helped to save heirloom varieties of corn and tomatoes, so too can rare domestic swine breeds be saved–if pork lovers demonstrate there’s a market for them.
Hey, thanks for linking to The Whole Hog Project. You can follow the further adventures of our mulefoot–culminating in a glorious snout-to -tail feast–on our blog the Food Chain:
http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/food/
Mike