Scrolling through BuzzFeed last week, I happened across an article “14 Things You Need To Know About Your Bacon” (You can read it here). I opened it because, well- bacon. Bacon is awesome. Needless to say, I was disappointed by the article. The HSUS, ASPCA, and PETA were all referenced, but no farmers. You know, the people that actually raise your bacon. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, if you have questions, please ask!

Here are 14 interesting facts about your bacon:

1. Bacon has been popular since pigs were domesticated. Bacon used to be cured and dried, so it lasted a lot longer than other cuts of pork, making it a popular pork product. We refer to bacon now as the delicious strip of meat that accompanies our eggs, but historically it was just a cured and dried piece of pork of varying sizes and flavors. Today, we have several cuts of bacon to choose from: side bacon, back bacon, jowl bacon, middle bacon, slab bacon….the list goes on. We are used to eating back bacon in the United States.
2. Bacon is addictive. People love bacon so much, the Saturday before Labor Day is known as International Bacon Day!
3. There are 69,000 pig farms in the United States that produce your bacon.
4. Roughly 10% of a pig’s weight is bacon. That’s 25 lbs of bacon if a pig is 250 lbs.
5. Fact: Bacon is delicious.
6. The average American eats about 322 strips of bacon in a year- that’s about 17.9 lbs!
7. There are several ways to prepare your bacon, including microwaving, frying, and baking. It’s said that baking your bacon is the most flavorful, but most people choose to fry their bacon.
8. It is estimated that about 53% of American households always have bacon on hand in the kitchen.
9. Besides bacon and eggs and bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches, you can use bacon to improve your salad, garnish your green beans, or even make bacon cupcakes!
10. It is totally YOUR choice to find what kind of bacon you like best. You get to choose between regular bacon, organically-raised bacon, turkey bacon, locally grown bacon, etc. It’s what’s great about being an American- YOU get to choose what you buy at the grocery store.
11. Pigs to make your bacon are raised in many different ways. None of them are the wrong way. There are free-range pig farms, barn-raised pig farms, organic pig farms, farrow-to-finish farms, and many more types. 97% of America’s farms are family farms, so you know that the pigs were raised humanely, like any farm animal should be.
12. You’ve heard of grass-fed beef, but there is no such thing as grass-fed bacon! Pigs are monogastric, which means that they have only one stomach. Cows are ruminants with four stomachs. The four stomachs help the cow to digest grass, but pigs can’t do that. They are normally fed a specialized diet with lots of grains.
13. Gestation stalls have a bad rap, and there are some disadvantages to them. Some disadvantages include the mother pig (called a sow) being able to lay down and stand up, but not able to turn around- this keeps them from pooping in their food trough! Another downside is that it doesn’t look very comfortable for the sow, but they are really helpful to protect farmers because sows are very strong animals and could hurt the farmer. Sows can also be very mean, especially during feeding times, so the individual stalls help to keep them from hurting each other and ensures that the sow will get her share of breakfast.
14. Farmers care about their pigs. An abused pig will not do very well, and the farmer has no incentive to harm their animals in any way. Farmers do their best to care for their animals and make sure that they are treated with respect, as any farm animal deserves.

I’d like to give credit to the National Pork Poard (pork.org, porkcares.org) and Peggy Greenway, a pig farmer in Mitchell, South Dakota, for answering several of my questions about pig farming!