A Boaring Meat Question

[This Little Piggy]

The local farmer from whom I buy all my pork has an 3-year-old, 800-pound Berkshire boar that he's ready to get rid of in the fall. He wasn't even planning to send it to the slaughterhouse until I expressed interest. If I want it, he'll sell me the whole pig for $50.

What I want to know is are there any real reasons why a mature boar should be considered unfit to eat?

I understand that there is a concern about "boar taint," where androstenone and skatole accumulate in the fat and give off a rank, sweat-urine-and/or-faeces odor when the meat is cooked. Yum. But this seems to be fairly rare and even less common with older breeds like the Berkshire. And even where it occurs, it sounds like the fat can be trimmed off and replaced with back fat from a younger pig.

I imagine the meat of an older animal will be a little tougher, but it seems like that could be at least somewhat overcome with hanging. And toughness wouldn't matter if it's getting ground up for sausages.

Has anyone else cooked or made sausages with boar meat and have any experience to share?

[beardedwonder5]

Boar taint.

[wheels]

TLP

You are already aware of the possibility of boar taint, but the question is, are you prepared to bet $50 + costs against the possibility of a whole lot of meat for next to nothing?

Phil

[beardedwonder5]

From my experience the lean meat was most unpleasant. I don't know the name of the breed. The chops were very cheap at the till. Threw them away, so not so cheap after all.

Most of the farmers I know are pretty canny. I don't know any butchers well. But I assume any butcher who makes his own sausage would be very wary of an old-age boar. So why has a canny farmer not got together with a canny butcher?

[This Little Piggy]

I know it should give me pause when a farmer I know and trust as much as tells me that he considers the meat next to worthless. But I've also found, at least in my locale, that producers and processors tend to be set in their ways. On my blog, you can read all about the struggle I had with a local processor just to get him to hang a side of beef for a measly four weeks (search for "battle of the beef"). Even farmers who are going against the grain, and raising heritage breeds on organic pasture, being very experimental and independent, can still be surprisingly conventional in some of their thinking. For instance, it took some searching and persuading to find a local farmer willing to castrate some young rams and raise them for another year, so that I could have some "hogget." The conventional wisdom around here is that "everyone likes their lamb tender and mild-tasting"�ie, not too lamby.

Some of the studies on boar taint that I've turned up find it in only 15% of their samples, suggesting that the problem may be overstated (although some breeds, such as the Duroc, may be more prone). One farmer in the States who has posted the most about this issue has found absolutely no taint in any of his intact boars, up to 30 months of age, and he claims to have tasted more than 100 by now. In a recent blind taste test, he says that 80% of his customers actually preferred the boar meat. Here's the URL for his blog:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/

His recommendation was to be there when the boar is slaughtered and take a soldering iron to the fat. If it's tainted, he says I'll be able to smell it. Then I'll be able to decide whether to take the meat�trimmed of fat�or leave it.

[beardedwonder5]

Intelligent method of testing. But when do you pay?

[This Little Piggy]

I would pay the farmer $50 just for taking the boar to slaughter. I would have to pay the processor their kill fee, plus a disposal fee if I were to decide not to take the meat. Butchering, packaging, and freezing runs about $1 a pound.

From what I read, even if the boar is tainted with the hormones that give it an off flavor, the meat would still be useable and edible. Since the hormones are concentrated in the fat, if I smell any taint, I would just want to tell the processor to trim as much fat as possible and throw it away. It would also let me know that I'm looking at using all the meat for sausages instead of chops, roasts, hams, etc.

[beardedwonder5]

The sugar mountain blog is a real treat. Thanks for pointing it out.

[KyleCaires]

purchase the boar

two options:
- use an experienced butcher of hogs, careful removal of repro tract and accessory sex glands, their will be a slight undertone of skatole
- castrate the boar, wait for 6 weeks and harvest the hog.

[This Little Piggy]

If the farmer's amenable, just turning the boar out to pasture for a month before slaughter, seems like it would also work; that would both keep him out his own faeces and clear up any skatole and keep him away from the other pigs, sows and boars, and thus suppress his production of androstenone. An older farmer that Walter Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm knows swears by this technique.

I don't know anyone who would even think about taking on the task (or is that tusk?) of castrating a half-ton boar!

[beardedwonder5]

There is a blog site

Sugar Mountain Farm

with an entry posted yesterday which is interesting. The second part of the entry is about boar taint. The blog owner raises (mainly) pigs in Vermont.

[quietwatersfarm]

Weve never had a single case of 'boar taint' in all the years we have been raising pigs.

They run free in the woods and are all left intact, often until a good age.

The mention of 'canny' butchers made me think of my last visit to Holsworthy market. I watched a couple of butchers paying next to nothing for very big old boars (which were bound for sausages) so perhaps they are in fact so canny that they overstate the risk of BT to corner the market!

[This Little Piggy]

What breed of pigs are you raising? Breed does seem to make a difference, with some modern breeds being more susceptible to boar taint. Walter Jeffries, of Sugar Mountain Farm, also claims that it is a matter of breeding, and that, by paying attention, he's been able to exclude boar taint from the pigs he raises.

Speaking of "canny butchers," it has been an interesting lesson for me to learn about good meat that people are practically giving away. Buying from local farmers, who raise their animals on natural pasture, I've been paying a premium for most meat. Slowly, I've learned about animals that are considered less marketable or even unmarketable�older animals, intact males�animals who may be considered "too tough" or "too highly flavored" to make into regular cuts, but which make great sausages and cured meats. It can be great-tasting, lean meat, and sometimes it's just being thrown away!

[quietwatersfarm]

We raise saddlebacks, tamworths and tamworth cross Old spots.