Rooting for locavores

Heritage-breed pig fattens in a pasture at a farm in Snow Camp

How did the little piggie get to market?

For pig No. 9251, one of seven piglets born last July on a 500-acre farm in Snow Camp, it came after 10 months spent running around pastures with dozens of other pigs, rooting for acorns in wooded groves and fattening up on feed.

When it was time to go to the meat-packing plant 32 miles away, this pig twice escaped the farmer's grasp. But not for long.

His pork chops and ham steaks were sold at the Carrboro Farmers' Market. His bellies and shoulders were made into bacon and confit and served at some of the Triangle's best restaurants.

Pig No. 9251 is just what people here increasingly seem to want: Animals raised in pastures and not on concrete, that traveled just a few miles to their table. They want to know how the farmer treated the animals.

But pasture-raised meat is expensive and with the price of most foods going up, people are finding themselves grappling with the moral and environmental costs of buying cheaper meat raised on a factory farm.

Books such as Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Marion Nestle's "What to Eat," and Peter Singer's "In Defense of Animals," fuel the debate. Add to that the news-making videos of injured cows being led to slaughter, and more people are asking about the origin of their hamburger or the treatment of the pig whose pork chop is now their dinner.

As a result, a trip to the grocery store can become an exercise in angst.

Should the choice of breakfast sausage take into account the environmental cost of hog lagoons that dot the North Carolina countryside? Are we OK with the fact that factory-farmed sows are raised in crates so small they cannot turn around while pregnant and weaning?

The debate is even more complicated for Triangle locavores because of Smithfield Packing. The company runs the world's largest pork-processing plant, just 85 miles south of Raleigh in Tar Heel.

Smithfield contracts with 1,250 hog farmers and 350 turkey farmers in North Carolina, mostly east of Raleigh. Even if you disagree with their farming methods or their contentious union relations, buying Smithfield products helps support those local farmers.

In these ambivalent times, we wanted to explore the trade-offs for what some believe is the best-case meat-eating scenario: humanely raised animals on a local farm. To tell the tale of the ideal pork chop, we chose Cane Creek Farm in Snow Camp and followed a single pig from birth to table.

A special breed

Eliza MacLean is one of the Triangle's most experienced heritage-breed pig farmers.

Since 2001, MacLean has been raising pigs, mostly Ossabaws, a breed that lives on Ossabaw Island off the coast of Georgia and was brought over by the Spanish. By raising this rare pig breed, she's helping preserve the genetic line. The 42-year-old single mother of twins came to pig farming late in life. MacLean moved to North Carolina in her 30s to get a master's degree from Duke University.

After graduating with an environmental toxicology degree, she wanted a career that would enable her to stay home with her kids. About that time, she started working with hogs at N.C. A&T University. One look at a pig and, MacLean said, "I fell in love."

Pigs are intelligent creatures. They can be taught to do tricks like dogs. They can be domesticated. In Europe, pigs are trained to hunt for the prized mushrooms called truffles. A pig can run a seven-minute mile.

MacLean is used to being asked how, if she loves pigs, she can destine them for the slaughterhouse.

"I made a choice to raise these animals in a proper fashion," she said. "I feel it's my responsibility to assure consumers that they are slaughtered without pain. All they know in their life is pigness -- they get to root, wallow and naturally breed."