America Has a Bacon Problem: Our Pigs Aren’t Fat Enough

For decades, hog farmers have been breeding animals to produce a leaner, pinker, lower-fat variety of meat that would calm their customers’ fears of clogged arteries. Lately, however, the strategy has run into an obstacle few people saw coming: a legion of foodies who think skinny pigs make for dry, bland meat.  The growing clamor for greasy bacon, sausages stuffed with supple lard, and pork chops oozing with deep, scrumptious, oleaginous flab is so strong, in fact, that a problem has developed. America has a shortage of flabby pigs. After deciding to search for a new local source of pork chops in December, Mr. Foster had to patiently woo an upstate New York farmer just to get his hooks on a single portly Ossabaw Island hog. “He sent us a pig. Then two pigs,” Mr. Foster says of the courtship. “It was ‘Let’s feel this out.’ ” More back fat is what discriminating pork lovers want, inches of it, along with redder meat. And thick, greasy bacon, and more supple lard in sausages. That’s the attraction of meat from fatty “heritage” breeds that can be hard to come by.