China eats half the world's pork and even keeps a strategic reserve
Pigs supply about a third of the planet's meat, second only to poultry, and by 2017 half of all pork was eaten in one country. China prizes the meat so highly that the state keeps a strategic pork reserve, and Mao's favourite dish was a slow red-braised belly from Hunan.
People have kept pigs for a very long time, though the dates vary with the evidence: one estimate puts domestication in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, while husbandry more generally is traced to 8000 to 9000 BCE. In China, the village of Cishan shows pigs being raised about 8,000 years ago, making them one of the country's earliest farm animals. Islam and Judaism are the best-known traditions that forbid eating it.
Chinese cooks favour pork over beef for practical and sensory reasons. Pigs are cheap to feed and are not needed for field work, and the pale meat and fat are considered more appetising, with a sweeter, cleaner taste and a reputation for easy digestion. In rural areas, sharing pork marks important occasions. Global consumption reached nearly 100 million tonnes in 2006 and about 110 million in 2015. In 2020 China, the European Union and the United States together produced roughly three quarters of the world's supply.
In Europe and North America pork used to be seasonal. Animals born in spring fattened over summer and were slaughtered in autumn, just as apples ripened, which is why the two still share a plate long after refrigeration and industrial breeding made both available all year. Preservation shaped the rest of the menu: salting and smoking turn legs and shoulders into ham, and sides and bellies into bacon, which can spend up to ten hours in wood smoke.
In 15th-century France, city guilds of charcutiers held a monopoly on cooked, salted and dried pork goods such as pâtés, rillettes and head cheese; the only raw product they could sell was unrendered lard. Every region has its own showpiece: Spain's jamón from the hind leg, Brazil's feijoada made with ears, tail and feet, Filipino lechon roasted whole, and Denmark's flæskesteg with crackling at Christmas.
Source: Pork
