On either side of a long straight road in the Central Valley city of Dixon sunflowers sway in the breeze and tomato vines crawl across the earth; cattle at pasture moo and a green tractor lumbers across a dirt field. The leaves of eucalyptus and walnut trees rustle in the breeze. A loud grunt, a squeal and a small commotion break the afternoon stillness on Grabish Farm: a 700-pound mulefoot boar, a domestic heritage breed of hog distinguished by not only its uncloven hoof but also its uncommon lard production and undeniable flavor, has just mounted breeding sow Gidget to sire a litter of prized mulefoot piglets. 

In addition to other external signs of being in estrus, Amy Grabish, co-owner and -operator of Grabish Farm noticed one of her three mulefoot breeding sows pacing incessantly up and down the fenceline to Boss Hog’s pen. Amy let Gidget into Boss Hog’s pen and left the two lovepigs together for a few days. Grabish Farm’s breeding practices, along with many of its other qualities, while not conceived of or intentionally positioned in such a fashion, sit squarely in opposition to the industrial agriculture system that dominates American food production today. 

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Industrial agriculture is a fairly new phenomenon, and the industrial production of meat even more recent. In the last few decades concentrated animal feeding operations, known as CAFOs, have come to dominate meat production in the United States. The rise is often attributed to new farming technology, but often times these technological “advances” are doing more harm than good. 

CAFOs have a huge impact on the environment, human health and the health of the livestock that will become the pork chop on a dinner plate. Heavily subsidized monoculture grain, homogenized breeds of livestock adapted to CAFO conditions and the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics have all made the rise of CAFOs possible, all three of which contribute significantly to the decline of human and livestock health as well as the degradation of our environment. Through federal subsidies, taxpayers are often footing the bill. 

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Before the rise of industrial foodways, master breeders selected genetic stock for resiliency, fertility, regional acclimation, utility and, of course, flavor. Mulefoots were bred with a specific utility in mind: emphasize their exceptional lard production. Many of these breeds have been all but abandoned with the demand for standardized animals by all of the largest meat processors in the country. 

Heritage breeds have not been discarded altogether only through the efforts of small farmers across the nation as well as The Livestock Conservancy, an organization dedicated to the preservation of endangered breeds of livestock. The Conservancy seeks out new breeds and adds them to their register by any means necessary. Their mission revolves around science and preservation of the genetic lines of our forefathers livestock, but they also recognize that they are preserving the genetics of the livestock that helped build America. The Conservancy maintains survey data on the numbers of heritage breed animals in the United States as well as categorizing the breeds by priority. 

The Conservancy categorizes mulefoot hog genetics as critically endangered. According to census data from the Conservancy, there are less than 200 annual registrations of mulefoot hogs in the United States and less than 2,000 estimated mulefoots altogether, which places them in the “Critical” category on the Conservancy Priority List. 

By any measure industrial breeds of livestock outnumber heritage breeds by a wide margin. Comparing reported numbers of breeding stock from the Conservancy versus those reported by the USDA, heritage breeding stock hogs make up about .002% of the total breeding stock population. But scattered throughout the United States there are small farms and livestock breeders who endeavor to not only preserve but also promote the genetic lines our forefathers worked so hard to develop. Amy Grabish is one of only two registered mulefoot breeders in California, and she intends to be the best. 

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The Bay Area has a long history of ambitious personalities in its food history. 

When Anchor Brewing Company was on the brink of folding in 1965, Fritz Maytag stepped in and bought a majority holding. Despite industry trends toward the use of chemical additives, hops extracts and artificial coloring, Anchor continued brewing using a traditional process and traditional ingredients. Anchor Beer not only ushered in the focus on traditional methods and natural ingredients that would turn into the craft beer movement, but they also introduced beer styles and marketing ideas that would become integral to the burgeoning craft beer movement. 

When Alfred Peet founded Peet’s Coffee in Berkeley in 1966 his vision not only focused on freshly roasted coffee but also conceived of their store as a place for people to gather and enjoy the ritual of coffee in addition to its stimulating effects. This ushered in the era of Starbucks, effectively bringing into the American zeitgeist a new respect for coffee. Indeed, they have adopted just this year the slogan “The Original Craft Coffee” to celebrate fifty years of dedication to coffee. 

The Bay Area remains at the cutting edge of food culture in America. Cowgirl Creamery, started in the 1990s by a lesbian couple in Marin County, leads the national charge for American artisan organic cheeses with their award-winning selection of handmade cheeses. Artisan coffee roasters Blue Bottle, Sightglass, Ritual and Four Barrel have ushered in yet another wave of coffee that focuses on coffee sourced from a single origin, lightly roasted to the beans’ individual characteristics. And now, small farmers like Amy and Larry are bringing forth a revolution in meat. 

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On September 23, 2015, Gidget gave birth to a healthy litter of eight piglets. One of the black-skinned, ebon-haired piglets will come to be known to the writer as No. 19, and if he and his littermates were to be compared to snorting, squealing super burritos with legs, he is short a serving of sour cream and avocado. Nonetheless, when Gidget lays down carefully on the ground and presents her teats to the piglets, he wriggles his way in to get a fair share of his mother’s milk. 

The piglets drank their mother’s milk until the sows saw fit to wean them. The piglets then transitioned to the solid kibble that provides the majority of the sustenance to Grabish Farm pigs, to be supplemented with insects, roots, nuts and the occasional treat from the garden. Their kibble is organic, non-GMO and, perhaps most importantly, antibiotic free. 

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To combat the high probability of a disease wiping out mass numbers of livestock, CAFOs administer a low daily dose of antibiotics meant to prevent any disease or infection from gaining a foothold. While regulations have since outlawed the practice, for many decades the antibiotics used in CAFOs were the same ones used to combat infection and disease in human beings, the same drugs we are finding today to be much less effective or altogether ineffective. 

Colistin, one of the medical profession’s final measures to fight against multi-drug resistant infectious disease, has recently been found to be ineffective against infection in a hospital setting. Not only that, but the mechanism for resisting the last resort antibiotic is easily passed between bacteria. Infectious disease professionals have recently come together to recommend that we must endeavor to find entirely new ways of fighting infections because it is clear to many in the field that the age of antibiotics is coming to a close. Removing the bacterial breeding ground that is the modern day CAFO will go a long way toward stopping the prevalence and evolution of some of these diseases. 

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Six weeks after their birth, No. 19 and his brothers are up for castration. 

Amidst the squealing, reeling and general chaos of the pig pen while rounding up the piglets for castration, including charging sows and quick-as-lightning piglets running every which way underfoot, the writer snuck up behind a piglet and lunged, locked his grip and hoisted No. 19 into his arms. The captured piglet’s legs kept running for a moment, but soon the pig calmed and sniffed upward at the writer’s downturned face. 

When all is said and done, all piglets tagged and duly neutered, the piglets will be returned to their mothers. Aside from feeding them and attending their health needs, Amy’s role in the rest of their admittedly short lives is largely done. They will grow slowly from super burrito to tamale cart. Their shoulders will widen as they grow taller. Their heads will remain small in comparison with their bodies, and their ears will broaden and flop over, almost covering their bright, expressive eyes. No. 19, along with his littermates, will spend the next six months in gen pop, hobbies to include digging with his snout for roots, grubs and insects; itching himself on fallen trees; sunbathing in groups generally no less than three; eating; wallowing; chewing on the shoes of visitors. In other words, the life of a rare breed of pig on a small California farm. 

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Craft. Micro. Single origin. Heirloom. These words have crept into the zeitgeist, each devoted to describing a consumer object which has been wrenched out of the hands of the opaque, sprawling corporation by a person who possesses a face, a voice, and a hand that may be shaken. They bring hard work, dedication, and perspective to what they view as a craft, skill or trade rather than a commodity. The story behind the product changes, which changes the consumer’s expectations of the product.

Vegetarianism and veganism are both popular ways to separate oneself from the narratives of factory farming, inhumane slaughter, and the negative impacts industrial agriculture has on our environment. But now it is becoming possible for a home consumer to find meat whose life and death do not resemble a death sentence in a penitentiary. Restaurants such as Chop Bar, Lungomare and Cactus Taqueria provide options for dining out, and establishments like Clove & Hoof and The Local Butcher Shop allow customers to take heritage breed meats home to serve them on their own dining table. Craft meat. Microfarmed meat. Single genetic line meat. Whatever moniker sticks, it will be the next big thing in food culture. 

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Eight months after the hogs are put out into Grabish Farm’s gen pop they approach the weight at which they are slaughtered, known as market weight. By twos the hogs are loaded into a trailer and driven 90 miles to the nearest slaughterhouse, each trip costing Grabish Farm significant resources. 

Riding in a trailer to the slaughterhouse is a new and stressful, if not downright terrifying, experience for a hog. The stress can produce adrenaline and lactic acid which taints the meat. Amy and Larry work hard to keep their animals from having to go through experiences like this, and the regulations set forth by the USDA are working against them in this most-personally important part of their endeavor. 

Within current regulations swine are not allowed to be slaughtered for resale at any facility not manned by a USDA meat inspector. Amy and Larry both cite this as a regulation that feels like it is actually working against small farms. It cuts their margins and makes it more difficult than it already is for their farm to be profitable at the end of the fiscal year. More importantly, it goes against the entire philosophy of their farm. 

Grabish Farm is lucky to have a processor nearby that accepts the small numbers of hogs they produce, but many small farmers must drive many hours to find a slaughterhouse that will accommodate them. Most large slaughterhouses are vertically integrated in a producer-processor-marketer chain that contractually prevents them from accepting animals from small producers. Facing off against one of the largest industries in the United States is hard enough already, but when you have government regulation and unfair market conditions working against you it can seem like an uphill battle on a nearly vertical incline. 

When No. 19 reaches market weight, he will not find himself in a slaughterhouse. He was chosen by Grabish Farm for a ranch slaughter. They will gather at their farm journalist, chef, intern and distinguished guests alike to bear witness to slaughter in a farm setting, contrary to the gleaming metal and tile setting of the modern industrial slaughterhouse, into which a continuous line of identical -- in appearance, size and genetics -- animals are fed day in, day out.  

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Large segments of the American livestock population are at risk of falling victim to disease. CAFOs and the industrial meat production system encourage the use of monoculture livestock, and the lack of biodiversity leaves the animals vulnerable to infectious disease. CAFOs cram so many animals into such paltry square footage with egregious hygiene practices that disease would run rampant through the cramped quarters were it not for the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. 

The impact of the Great Famine in Ireland was so great due to the fact that there were only one or two varieties of potatoes providing the majority of caloric sustenance to a large percentage of the population. The ensuing blight subsisted for concurrent years to wipe out virtually the entire potato crop across the entire nation due to the lack of genetic diversity. 

The only thing stopping history from repeating itself in a Great American Meat Famine are the same drugs we are finding to be less and less effective year after year: antibiotics.  

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No. 19 snoozed peacefully, sunbathing among a stand a trees with two of his littermates, as Amy rubbed the dirt from his ear tag to confirm his identity. Larry approached, aimed and without hesitation shot No. 19 directly between the eyes with a short barrel .22 caliber rifle. The small bullet did not kill No. 19, but the blunt force trauma of the impact on his thick skull and carapace stunned him completely, leaving him laying motionless in a pool of sunlight. 

Amy and Larry traded firearm for blade and Larry plunged the knife into No. 19’s neck and severed the major blood vessels. Despite being unconscious, No. 19’s nerves send him into convulsions while the blood lets freely from his neck. In moments he is still, bled to death among his brethren, having known nothing except a blinding explosion of light and sound followed immediately by unconsciousness. 

Without delay No. 19 is scalded, scraped, hung and dressed, the culmination of which is being sawed in half. Hanging from the forks of a midsize farm tractor in two halves, No. 19 no longer resembled a living and breathing hog, hardly recalled the lively and curious beast the writer has gotten to know over the past eight months. Headless, gutless and cleaved bodily in half, all semblance of a living, breathing and thinking creature is gone. No. 19 now looks like two sides of pork. 

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Unlike No. 19, who will go into the personal hangroom at Grabish Farm due to FDA regulations regarding ranch slaughters, the typical Grabish Farm mulefoot will be delivered as two sides of pork, each constituting half of the whole animal, to a chef who has spoken for it previously. The mulefoots are highly sought after for their lard, marbled meat and uncommon flavor. 

Once they reach market weight and make the trip to the slaughterhouse with Amy in the hog trailer, the hogs are slaughtered and then assessed by the USDA inspector before being delivered to the chef. 

With a boning knife, cleaver, mallet, honing steel and other tools the chef will butcher the sides of pork into the appropriate cuts, proceeding to bend, twist and break the joints and trim, slice and cleave the meat, using the mallet when necessary to break through a bone. Nothing is left behind, and every last part of the pig will be put to use in the kitchen. There is a saying among farmers and chefs: The only part of a pig you cannot eat is the oink. 

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Cultural expectations surrounding our food are important, but what will really make a difference is sound agricultural policy which balances consequences to human and animal health with efficiency. Strict enforcement of existing antitrust and environmental protection policy needs to be applied wholeheartedly to CAFOs and other industrial farming operations. Slaughterhouse regulations, government subsidies and support projects, most of which are currently skewed toward supporting large farming operations, need to be modified to support small and sustainable farming operations and exclude ones that harm our health and environment. 

Even when the only cultivation in the Bay Area was the controlled burns of Native Americans, there was a diverse bounty: greens, bulbs, roots and seeds in spring, fruits and berries along with deer and grasshoppers during summer, acorns and tubers through the fall, and in the rainy winter mushrooms, shellfish and a bounty of wild fowl. Upon that foundation has been added the the ingredients immigrants brought along with them during the Gold Rush era, especially Chinese, French and Mexican foods. In recent decades West Asian and African immigrants have not only brought their native cuisine with them but have also opened restaurants to share it with the larger community. All together that makes for a melting pot of ideas and traditions about food which is a perfect slow cooker for heritage breed meats to gain a foothold. 

In the Bay Area, artisan cheese is the next big thing, but artisan meat will be the next next big thing. Don’t be surprised to see the phrase ‘small batch pork chop’ on the menu when out to eat in the coming months; indeed, it may become a familiar part of our local and even national lexicon. Hopefully sooner rather than later, for the sake of man and beast alike.