Salon's Pork Week

Salon.com has been running a series of pig-related stories this week under the broader heading Pork Week. The week began with an essay called "Bacon Mania" by Sarah Hepola that sought to explain American's current fascination with bacon. On Tuesday, in "Belly of the Beast," Rebecca Traister described how she has started to cure her own bacon. Today, the entry is a video about Veritas Farms in New Paltz, New York, where they raise Gloucestershire Old Spot and Large Black pigs. The video "Not the Other White Meat" by Caitlin Shamberg and Rebecca Traister, is quite lovely in that the pigs seem quite happy to be pigs. Just be sure to turn the volume down at the start, as the clip is prefaced by an incredibly loud and irritating vodka ad.

It will be interesting to see what else they discuss in this "Pork Week." So far the stories have been interesting but fairly light, perhaps because they seem to take it as a given that Salon readers are familiar with the industrial production of pork and are looking for natural, free range and do-it-yourself alternatives.