Bad beasts, good treats

Feral hog slaughterhouse takes off

NEW ORLEANS In a region that takes food seriously, feral hogs are despised as destructive, but their rich, dark meat is winning fans among Louisiana chefs.

A small slaughterhouse is butchering the wild pigs , which cause the state $76 million-plus in annual damage, and selling sausage to grocery stores and meat to restaurants, where chefs are turning it into savory prosciutto, chorizo and meatballs.

“To me, it is the most interesting thing I have seen in years,” said Rene Bajeux, executive chef for the Palace Cafe and three other Dickie Brennan & Co. restaurants in New Orleans. “It is good for everything — good for business, good for cooking, good for the ecology, good for everything. Those bad beasts are a good treat.”

Springfield Slaughter House’s main business is butchering wild boar, which otherwise would be gobbling crops, competing with local wildlife and ripping up levees, fragile wetlands and other green spaces.

Feral hogs probably do more than $1.5 billion damage nationwide each year, according to the USDA, and the problem is only getting bigger: from 1982 to 2012, the invasive species spread from 17 states to 36.

Owner Charlie Munford got into the wild hog business in 2015. He’d been working with farmers, slaughterhouses and chefs to provide local beef, lamb, pork and goat to restaurants when he bought the slaughterhouse about 40 miles northwest of New Orleans in 2014.

Hunters have to bring the hogs, weighing in at 90 to 300 pounds, to Munford’s slaughterhouse alive so they can be inspected before slaughtering. Munford estimates he’s killed about 1,000 over the past year.

But one small slaughterhouse can take only a bite out of the estimated 600,000 feral swine in Louisiana: Authorities say 70 per cent of the population would have to be killed each year just to keep the numbers from growing.

At his slaughterhouse, Munford first stayed with the traditional meats. Then he read about a program to slaughter feral hogs for commercial sale in Texas — about 461,000 between 2004 and 2009. The Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry was already considering a program similar to Texas’ and helped Munford get started. Feral swine are now 90 per cent of his business; the rest is domestic pork.

Wild boar saved the slaughterhouse after a plan to raise and sell grass-fed beef to a grocery chain fell through, he said.

“The restaurant demand for beef, lamb and domestic pork has declined . ... It would have been hard to stay in business without a major game-changer,” Munford said.