Pork

The National Pork Producers Council said Thursday that it has formally asked the U.S. government to impose import duties on pork products from Canada, claiming that Canadian farmers are subsidized and compete unfairly with American hog farmers. Council President Ray Hankes said a petition was filed Wednesday with the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department asking that countervailing duties be imposed on fresh, chilled and frozen pork products from Canada.

Pork futures climbed the limit allowed for daily trading Thursday while cattle futures fluctuated wildly. Grain and soybean futures were sharply higher. Brisk buying in the live hog and frozen pork belly pits of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was linked to Wednesday's government report showing a 9% expansion in the nation's hog herd, said Philip Stanley, an analyst in Chicago with Thomson McKinnon Securities Inc. Live hogs bounced back to settle up the 1.

It was a wedding the guests would never forget. Everybody of consequence in the village had been invited to a banquet to celebrate the marriage of the son of one of the wealthiest families. Fifty tables groaned under a lavish spread of dumplings, steamed chickens, pork ribs, meatballs, stir fries, all of it exceptionally delicious, guests would later recall. But about an hour into the meal, something seemed to be wrong. A pregnant woman collapsed. Old men clutched their chests. Children vomited.

Holidays have a way of being identified with certain kinds of food. Turkey makes us think of Thanksgiving. Potato latkes always appear at Hanukkah time. Eggnog is usually under the mistletoe and ham is a traditional Easter meal. But pork has a somewhat justified reputation as being high in fat and not really a component of a healthful diet. The biggest villains, of course, are bacon, sausage, hot dogs, ribs and pork rinds.

According to the calendar, this is the Year of the Pig in China. Cute little piggies in all forms -- ceramic, stuffed, cast, drawn -- are ubiquitous these days. But it isn't tender feelings for swine that caused Wang Bin, a retired export company worker, to start replacing pork with vegetables, chicken and fish as the mainstays of her family's diet. Like hundreds of millions of other Chinese, she's simply feeling the pinch of pork prices that have gone up 40% or more over the last year.

It all started several weeks ago when I found pork butts on special and bought a couple. I always buy several when I find pork butts on special because there are so many good things to do with them. I decided to make char siu, a Chinese-style barbecued pork, with one of them. That was easy. The second pork butt was to be turned into tasso. That's a different story. Tasso is a spicy, heavily peppered and smoked pork butt that is an essential ingredient in many wonderful Cajun dishes.

Babe, the Oscar-contending pig, is going to cringe, but when it comes to fast-food restaurant menus, bacon is sizzling. Whether adorning a Western Bacon Cheeseburger at Carl's Jr. or gracing the hefty Frisco Burger at Russell's Famous Hamburgers, bacon is becoming the topping of choice in the hotly competitive industry. When Taco Bell Corp. wanted to rev up sales late last year, the Irvine-based company stuffed its burritos and tacos with bacon. And when McDonald's Corp.

A skein of flat, linguine-like noodles and shards of ginger are so fine they all but dissolve in the broth. There are pork ribs, with brawny slabs of meat thick as a Little Leaguer's baseball bat. But the soki soba is all about the bones, marrow-filled ribs stewed until they can be eaten. If there's one thing Mayumi Vargas wants everyone to know about her native Okinawa, it's the island chain's affinity for pork. And at Habuya , Vargas' new Okinawan restaurant in a hidden corner of a Tustin mini-mall, pork is a uniting force.

There's a new pig in town. It's called Kurobuta, and for those who prefer their pork flavorful, rich and tender rather than lean and mean, this is great news. A number of Los Angeles chefs are so excited about it that it wouldn't be surprising if Kurobuta becomes known as the other other white meat. Kurobuta, which is also known as Berkshire pork, means "black pig" in Japanese. The pig is black with six white points: feet, face and switch (the last few inches of the tail).

Harold Trask's quest for the perfect pig began in 1978. Consumers wanted lean meat and would have nothing else. Pork had to change or face gastronomic oblivion. "So we bred for lean," said Trask, a rough-cut hog farmer from the central Iowa flatlands. The idea was to achieve "lean pork"--a linguistic contradiction in terms and a sharp break with tradition in an industry that 40 years ago prided itself on 35 pounds of fat-per-animal "lard hogs" that provided shortening for an entire nation.