This Week in Bacon
What do you get when you combine Winnipeg and Omega-3 acids? Winningpig!
[T]here’s something decidedly fishy about hogs waddling around three farms near Winnipeg.
Contained within their portly bodies is a glut of omega-3s, the fatty acids found mainly in seafood that make oily fish so healthy.
For years, researchers have puzzled over how to add these highly sought-after oils to the flesh of other animals, with little success.
But over the past five months, Prairie Orchard Farms, a small research and marketing firm in rural Manitoba, has won two prestigious awards for doing just that. First came the federal government’s highest honour for agricultural innovation in November and, three months later, another Alberta-based prize for pork innovation.
The omega-3 pig looks and tastes much like an average hog, but it could prove to be a lucrative new entry into a market that’s increasingly wary of the health risks of red meat.
“I know a product like healthy bacon almost sounds like an oxymoron” said Willy Hoffmann, president of Prairie Orchard, located about 45 minutes west of Winnipeg in Elie, Man. “We have a novel product that way.”
The tale of how Prairie Orchard stumbled upon omega-3 pork is one of luck and perseverance.
More on that tale here. Prairie Orchard Farms describes is suped-up pigs (featuring audio and video links) here. Pick up your Omega-3 bacon — which I hope tastes better than the Prairie Orchard Farms photo pictured above makes it appear — here.
NPR on earlier U.S. scientists’ efforts to cram good fats into bacon here. Slashfood noting Omega-3 bacon was, in 2006, just a bacony pie in the sky idea here.
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susan allport
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