Do Pigs Really Eat Bacon?

Bacon is one of the most beloved pork products around the world. The crispy, salty, smoky strips of cured and smoked pork belly are a staple breakfast food for many. But have you ever wondered – do pigs really eat bacon themselves?

If you’re short on time, here’s a quick answer to your question: No, pigs do not eat bacon, at least not in the cured and processed bacon form that humans consume.

In this comprehensive article, we will dive deep into all aspects of the question of whether pigs eat bacon. We will look at what bacon is, how it is made from pork bellies, and how the curing process results in a product quite different from the fresh pork belly that pigs consume.

We will also explore how pigs are fed, what their natural diets consist of, and what restrictions there are around feeding pork products back to pigs. Read on for the full story!

What Exactly is Bacon?

Pork belly origins

Bacon originated from pork bellies, which are the sides of a pig’s abdomen. Pork bellies contain high amounts of fat marbled between the streaks of lean meat, making them perfect for curing and smoking into bacon.

People have been curing pork for thousands of years as a way to preserve meat before refrigeration. The ancient Romans and Chinese salted, smoked, and dried pork to make it last longer. Over time, new curing and smoking techniques were developed, leading to the bacon we know and love today.

In America, bacon became popular in the 1800s as the pork packing industry grew, especially in cities like Cincinnati and Chicago. Pork bellies were easy to salt and smoke in large quantities, making bacon an affordable staple food for many families.

Different regional styles of bacon emerged, like peppered bacon in the South and maple smoked bacon in New England. Today, over half of all households in America eat bacon, with the average American consuming nearly 18 pounds of bacon each year!

The curing and smoking process

Turning a raw pork belly into bacon is a multi-step process. First, the pork belly is cured by rubbing salt, spices, and preservatives like sodium nitrite onto the meat. This curing process draws out moisture, adds flavor, and preserves the meat.

Common spices used are black pepper, paprika, garlic, brown sugar, and maple syrup. The pork belly cures for 3-10 days depending on thickness.

After curing, the pork belly is cold smoked slowly over a fire of hardwood chips like hickory or applewood. Smoking cooks the meat while infusing a smoky, savory flavor. The smoking process can take 1-2 days to fully penetrate the meat.

Smoked bacon is then cooled to around freezing temperature to stop the cooking process. Finally, the bacon is sliced and packaged for consumers to cook before eating.

There are also “fast-cured” bacons that are injected with brine and smoke flavoring then quickly cooked. While faster to produce, these lack the full flavor and texture of traditionally cured and smoked bacon. In general, look for bacon with simple, natural ingredients for the best quality and taste.

What Do Pigs Naturally Eat?

Foraging Behaviors

Pigs are natural foragers and use their sensitive snouts to locate a wide-range of foods. As omnivores with opportunistic feeding habits, pigs spend the majority of their time rooting for food. According to Dalehead.com, digging pits with their snouts allows pigs to uncover roots, tubers, worms, insects, and small animals hidden in the soil.

When foraging in a natural environment, pigs will cover several miles a day in search of sustenance. The distance they roam depends on the availability of food sources in that region. Their constant foraging and grazing enables pigs to consume a nutritionally adequate diet.

Omnivorous Diet

Domesticated pigs are classified as omnivores that prefer to ingest both plant and animal matter when living in natural conditions. These adaptive foragers consume a wide variety of different food types to meet their nutritional needs.

According to NewScientist.com, over 90% of a feral pig’s diet consists of plant materials, with the rest coming from worms, fungi, dead animals, bird eggs, and the occasional small live prey like mice or reptiles.

Some common plant foods pigs seek out when roaming freely include:

• Grasses
• Roots
• Fruits
• Berries
• Seeds
• Flowers
• Bulbs
• Tubers
• Mushrooms
• Acorns

No Experience with Processed Meats

Contrary to the age-old question – pigs do not have any exposure or opportunity to consume bacon or other processed pork products when in their natural environment. The domestic pig’s ancestors (wild boars) certainly never ate such things either.

Sausages, bacon, ham and other cured or smoked meats are manufactured from pig meat specifically for human consumption. Feral pigs subsist by foraging for the nutrients they need on a daily basis from natural food sources.

Why Pigs Can’t Eat Bacon

Risk of disease transmission

Feeding pigs meat from their own species raises concerns about disease transmission. Prions, misfolded proteins that cause fatal brain diseases like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, could theoretically pass to pigs fed pork products.

While there have been no reported cases of prion diseases in swine due to cannibalism, the possibility remains concerning from a public health standpoint.

Other pig-specific viruses like porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), which causes reproductive failure in breeding stock and respiratory tract illness in young pigs, could spread more rapidly if pigs eat infected pork.

PRRS causes estimated losses of over $650 million annually in the US pork industry alone.

Cannibalism concerns

There are ethical issues with feeding pigs pork ingredients that essentially amounts to cannibalism. While the taboo against cannibalism mainly applies to humans, pigs are intelligent animals capable of suffering, so subjecting them to cannibalistic diets raises animal welfare criticism.

The pork industry avoids public backlash from extreme practices perceived as inhumane. Cannibalistic feeding risks damaging pork’s reputation among conscientious consumers increasingly concerned about animal welfare in food production.

Legal regulations prohibiting recycling pork to pigs

Laws prohibit feeding pork to pigs to minimize disease transmission risks. For example, U.S. federal law bans the use of mammalian protein like pork products in feed for ruminant animals like cows and sheep.

While there is no current ban against feeding pigs pork, the FDA advises against this practice to manage prion disease risks.

The European Union also banned recycling animal proteins within the same species back to livestock animals, though exceptions exist for fish meal and blood products. Most developed countries have taken legal steps to stop livestock cannibalism due to animal and human health concerns.

What About Wild Pigs?

Scavenging behaviors

Wild pigs such as feral hogs have omnivorous feeding behaviors, meaning they eat both plant and animal matter. They spend around 75% of their daily activity foraging and rooting for food (1). Wild pigs often scavenge for their meals, searching for roots, fungi, fruits, seeds, leaves, stems, nuts, insects, eggs, dead animals, worms, small reptiles and more.

As opportunistic foragers, feral hogs will eat almost anything they come across while grazing. This includes both vegetation and small animals. According to research from the University of California (2), over 50 different food items were found from examining feral pig stomachs.

Scavenging behaviors allow them to survive on diverse food sources.

Low likelihood of encountering cured meats

Since feral pigs live in forests, wetlands and rugged terrain away from humans, they are unlikely to find and consume manufactured cured or processed meats such as bacon. These food items would only be present if improperly disposed of as litter where wild pigs roam.

A 2008 study analyzed the stomach contents of over 300 wild pigs across California and did not find any occurrence of store-bought or factory processed meat products (3). The low interaction between feral swine and areas where cured bacon is found means wild pigs almost never eat anything resembling commercial bacon in the wild.

Focus on fruits, vegetables, small animals

Instead of cured meats, studies show feral hogs predominately eat acorns, grasses, sedges, roots, tubers, vegetation, crops, fruits, seeds, stems, leaves, nuts, berries, mushrooms and small animals they capture such as frogs, rabbits, mice and snakes (4).

This list of seasonal favorites shows how wild pigs focus their foraging on the natural plant and animal foods found in their habitats.

While feral hogs are not above scavenging human trash for a quick meal, the bulk of their diet consists of vegetation, fungi and small prey when available. Manufactured bacon is rarely if ever on the menu for wild pigs rooting around forests and fields!

The Bottom Line

When it comes down to it, pigs do not actually eat bacon. Here’s a quick rundown of the key facts:

• Bacon is made from pork, which comes from pigs. So in a sense, pigs do become bacon. However, pigs themselves do not eat bacon or other pork products.
• Pigs are omnivores and will eat a varied diet. Their natural diet consists of grasses, roots, fruits, vegetables, insects, worms, etc. Pigs will not naturally eat meat products.
• On pig farms, the pigs are fed a specialized diet suited to their nutritional needs. This diet contains grains like corn and soy, along with vitamins and minerals. It does not contain any pork.
• There are religious and cultural taboos against pigs consuming pork. For instance, pigs raised according to Jewish kosher or Islamic halal dietary laws cannot be fed any pork.

While the saying “pigs eating bacon” does make a funny mental image, pigs do not actually consume pork products like bacon, ham, or sausage. Their natural diets consist of plant matter and smaller prey. On farms, they are fed a nutritionally balanced vegetarian diet.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping a pig from accidentally eating bacon if some fell into its pen! But pigs themselves are not noshing on pork. The bottom line is that bacon is made from pigs, but it is not a regular part of a pig’s diet.

Conclusion

So in summary, while pigs may technically be capable of consuming bacon, they do not seek it out as food in nature. Commercially farmed pigs are restricted from being fed pork products, both for health reasons and due to regulations.

While feral pigs could potentially eat bacon if they came across it, it is unlikely to be a significant part of their diet. So the verdict is clear: pigs do not actively eat bacon, at least not how we prepare it.

Hopefully this comprehensive overview has satisfied your curiosity on this porcine topic!