Seattle is home to Bacon Salt and Baconnaise, and one of the two guys behind that push, 39-year-old David Lefkow, was just honored as one of the town's "Forty Under Forty." So it's understandable that all those tweets about the looming bacon shortage would resonate here, in the Land of the Burning Beast.
But wait, they're not true, not entirely. Turns out, according to Slate, that there's a pork-producers trade association in England (where "bacon and eggs" is a staple morning dish, even more revered than in the US), that warned the Brits to expect higher prices for their rashers in the months ahead. "A world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable," read the scary release this week by the National Pig Association of the United Kingdom.
With that, the Twitterverse erupted. But again, it's not true.
It's not a "world shortage of pork" that we should be worried about, but a worldwide decline in the corn harvest. This year's drought has reduced the corn crop by half. Demand for fuel (ethanol, made by distilling corn) siphons off half of that. Subtract corn-on-the-cob, high fructose corn syrup and corn oil. What's left over gets fed first to cows, then to pigs. (Yes, your bacon-burger is basically produced from corn.)
So the bacon-producing pig is competing for corn with the refineries that sell gas for your car. It's a tossup: bacon or gas, gas or bacon.
Because, you know, if you get the answer wrong, the pig just might eat you for breakfast.
Oh, by the way, those Kubota-Port strips of tepura-fried bacon in the picture: just named Seattle's most decadent appetizer by Seattle Met.
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