Thursday, April 17, 2008

Where's the pasture-raised Pork?

My favorite chapter of Michael Pollan's "The Omnivores Dilema" is the one he spends working at Joel Salatin's Polyface farm in Virginia. I'd been reading Salatin's occasional column for years in the tiny periodical called Stockman GrassFarmer (my friend Jon has a small farm in Warren, Maine and is a devout disciple of Salatin) and I knew about Salatin's lack of success selling eggs to Whole Foods
so I was shocked to learn that The Washington Post was reporting that the restaurant chain Chipotle had pledged to buy 100% of it's pork from Polyface. Polyface, famous in sustainable food circles for its rotational grazing system is by comparison a small operation and calls itself beyond organic as Salatin refuses to ship it's products - Salatin wouldn't even agree to fedx a steak to Pollan for his book. How could Polyface raise enough pastured-pork for all of Chipotle's (the post reported that Chipotle's buys 5 million pounds of pork annually?) How could Salatin supply pork across the entire US?

My shock turned to relief when I read further that Chipotle's was only pledging to buy 100% of its pork for it Charlottesville locations. Joel hadn't sold out. Phew....

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