Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 7, 1994                   TAG: 9409070130
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE HIGH-TECH ROAD THAT LITTLE PIGGIES TAKE TO MARKET

Comedy Central on cable TV even has found fuel for routines in the controversy created when D'Amato stood against a background of a fat pink pig stuffing its snout into a trough of cash and sang his ditty about overspending government.

The Pork Producers Association used it as an opportunity to remind us that pork is about as lean a meat as you can eat. Roanoke Times & World-News food editor Almena Hughes recently provided a thorough look at pork's future, including National Pig Development Co.'s leaner NPD breed developed in England and soon to be widely available in America.

But there's something else Congress, and businesses too, could learn from the pork people, especially those at the high-tech plant that Smithfield Foods Inc. runs in Bladen County, N.C. And that is how to operate so you get the product you want.

The life of a table porker is short - 26 weeks - but controlled at Smithfield.

Smithfield, parent of Valleydale Foods Inc. of Salem, attempts to buy its pork from what it calls its Circle of Friends, producers who raise their animals according to Smithfield's philosophy.

This means that if a producer says he's growing black-haired pigs, which are prized in the Japanese market, then that producer had better be able to trace the pig's lineage to prove it has all the attributes of a black-haired pig.

In addition to controlling the breeding, which includes paying premium prices for lean hogs, Smithfield uses sophisticated machinery to guide the processing of pork carcasses to yield the most profit from each animal.

At the Bladen plant, machinery can tell workers what process is most cost effective for a particular ham. For example, the best hams to debone are those with the greatest content of lean meat.

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, shows processors which hams will be most profitable to sell as boneless cuts and which need other handling.

The MRI takes the guesswork out of processing and keeps away complaints about fatty holiday hams, said Jehan Saulnier, executive director of international sales for Smithfield.

And if you wonder how a company can afford to use an MRI on a ham - since the procedure costs a minimum of $800 when used on a human being - then consider how many hams go through the machine at Bladen.

The plant processes 14,000 hogs a day; if local hospitals did that many people MRIs daily, the price might drop to pig level.

In addition to the MRI, which the Bladen plant began using in the past year, processors also use fat-o-meter probes to measure back fat. A fat reading at the hog's ninth rib gives a good idea of the animal's overall fat content, just like a fat pinch on a person can, said Saulnier.

The company also takes a scientific approach with the pork after it leaves the plant by test-marketing new products, such as the NPD lean pork.

The product, which competes with chicken, is being served at a number of upscale restaurants, including Berkley Hotel in Richmond, Smithfield Station in Smithfield and The Bistro in Norfolk. There's nowhere in Roanoke to eat it, but maybe that will change in a couple of months.

Friday, the lean pork food service distributors who concentrate on the Norfolk and Winston-Salem/Greensboro/Raleigh/Durham areas will start selling the meat.

E-I-E-I-O!