Nose-to-tail eating

Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig. By Mark Essig. Basic Books; 310 pages; $27.50.

“IF YOU are going to kill the animal, it seems only polite to use the whole thing,” says Fergus Henderson of London’s beloved piggy restaurant, St John. Mark Essig, a historian residing in the hoglands of North Carolina, would agree. Mr Essig’s “Lesser Beasts” concludes by outlining “the dilemma of modern pork”: big agricultural companies sell a lot of bacon to consumers for a pittance, whereas struggling smallholders offer small quantities of high-quality pork at organic markets for four times as much. These farmers can turn a profit only by selling every inch of their animals to adventurous chefs and gourmets.

Mr Essig’s broad, well-researched book highlights that this is merely the latest stage in man’s on-off-and-on-again relationship with pigs. The curly-tailed animals have proven extraordinarily useful to human development and have been present from the earliest permanent dwellings to modern metropolises. The porcine ability to turn waste of almost any description into protein—thanks to “a simple...

from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1JDMr1C