THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 31, 1995 TAG: 9505270152
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Linda McNatt
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
When ``this little piggy went to market,'' it was a porker.
But this is the lean generation.
I've been talking to the folks at Smithfield Packing because my curiosity was aroused recently when I saw one of that company's new tractor/trailer rigs touting lean pork.
Lean pork, to me, says one thing: skinny pigs. And if pigs are skinny, what do any of us have to compare with anymore?
The new rigs are part of a fleet that is expanding because of increased customer demand at Smithfield Packing, according to Transportation Manager Mike Glynn. The trucks have been used to advertise a number of the company's specialty products, and 10 of them boast the ``lean generation'' logo.
Those trucks, Glynn said, go into every state east of the Mississippi. But starting next month, Smithfield Packing's trucks will begin to cross the Mississippi - and products from this small town will be distributed into every state in the continental United States.
And I imagine a lot of folks will be scratching their heads when they see these shiny, new trucks and wonder what the lean generation is all about. After all, whoever heard of skinny pigs?
But, of course, they're not skinny, says Jim Schloss, vice president of marketing. These pigs are longer and leaner, but they're thick.
They were developed in England by a company called the National Pig Development Corp. The development started about 26 years ago, with the idea that European consumers were looking for more healthy products.
Well, the people at Smithfield Packing latched onto that right away. The local company brought the first breeding herd over in 1992 after buying exclusive rights in the United States and Mexico.
Since then, Schloss says, his company has been stepping lightly about getting the product to market because, without the fat, it is different from traditional pork.
The leaner pork cooks much faster, Schloss says, and it's best cooked at a lower temperature than meat with a higher fat content. Some of the cuts are actually 97 to 98 percent fat free, he says. Two weeks ago the company introduced a lean bacon line, touting it as 40 percent leaner than the USDA standard for bacon. All of the stats are backed up by research done at Duke University.
Right now you can see the pork advertised on the trucks, but you probably won't see it in your neighborhood supermarket for a while. Schloss says it's being sold at The Gourmet Market in Newport News and at a speciality shop in Williamsburg. Otherwise, it's featured on some restaurant menus - at Smithfield Station and a couple of others in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.
Company officials decided to start major distribution of the new, lean pork in restaurants first because they believed chefs would know better how to deal with it. They also thought it would appeal to chefs, Schloss said, because it cooks whiter than traditional pork, ``almost a veal-like whiteness.''
At the moment, Schloss said, there is no firm timetable for getting the new pork to supermarkets.
But, he said, its market is only expected to grow. Schloss said somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 leaner pigs a week are being processed at the plant. By year's end, the company expects that number to grow to about 9,000 a week. And projections are that within four years, they will be processing close to 100,000 a week.
``These pigs are not fat,'' Schloss said. ``They are a lot more muscular. Think of a health-club pig.''
Maybe they should put that picture on the trucks. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by LINDA McNATT
Smithfield Packing's new tractor-trailers are touting lean pork.
by CNB