10/29/2026
I have seen a certain processing facility I do not follow bashing farmers and their heritage pork. In addition to that over the past week I’ve seen this page and a few others post the topic on other farm pages. Here’s the deal…processors typically aren’t farmers. They don’t understand that pigs (animals) can vary drastically from how much they eat, what they eat, the space they can thrive in vs survive in and so forth. A pig is a pig, but some pigs do well on 10lb of feed a day and some do well on 5lb of feed a day. Some do fine on whatever scraps you can find and some will turn into a bucket of lard. So, although a pig is a pig, that’s really not the case. So many people are new to farming or new to pigs and it’s ok to learn. It’s ok to make mistakes, it happens. It’s a tough lesson to learn. To help one another, bashing their “premium heritage meat” in a negative light likely isn’t the best approach. Kinda a chump approach if you ask me. I can’t see how that builds up the community. So, what I’ll say is I’ve had processors down right ruin my order. Losing orders…unsure how that happens, but it has, losing parts of my order, replacing specific ground with whatever they felt like in the moment, not following my very detailed cut sheet and deciding the cuts they wanted are what I should get despite me having customers place orders for certain cuts or grounds. Honestly, they’ve cost me a lot of money. I have also had amazing processors who will get a pig in last minute to help me get inventory, give me ideas on new cuts, handle my order with so much care. Processors have a lane and it’s typically not the one that is in the rain, snow, extreme heat buying the animals and investing thousands into an animals with the hopes that you have something better than big box store to serve to your family. They have the one where they deal with multiple types of farmers every day trying to get that meat cut beautifully for us to serve. Both are valuable when done right. Both can be detrimental when done wrong. When a farmer does it wrong it hurts the farmer. When a processor does it wrong it hurts the FARMER. So, instead of a processing plant jumping on to ridicule a farm and their heritage breed, maybe they could give a guidance to the farm to secure their future business with the farmer. If the farmer can’t find out how to grow it better guess what, they stop. When they stop they no longer need a processor. So, when you see your fellow customers, community, friends falling down…pick them up! We’re not on tear them down team over here. We hope you all thrive and give everyone something better, healthier, and more trusted than what’s being provided on a larger scale to our communities.
I know which one I’m eating, that premium heritage pork that the processor I didn’t mention was complaining about and never that commercial hog he was raving about. Give me that red meat! Give me that heart healthy fat! Give me that Meishan premium pork! To be honest, they were complaining about “premium heritage pork” not Meishan pigs specifically.
*their premium pork vs Pig Wing Farm’s premium heritage pork ;)
