Arkansas is a leader in free-range Spam
Dear Otus, We went camping all last week at DeGray and ate a ton of Spam. Now I feel guilty. Should I? — Helen Highwater
Harrison Dear Helen, It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you. To answer your question: It depends.
How many of us ever consider how the tasty canned meat is rendered and packaged?
But thanks to the hue and cry from an outraged world, the days of the bloody killing beaches are past. The days when cruel men from the Spam trawlers would stride amid the placid Spam herds of Newfoundland are gone. As I first wrote in 1984:
“The Spam hunters arrive with the first wisps of autumn. Their faces are stone. Burly, strapping, dark and relentless, they wade ashore armed with cruel oaken cudgels and carrying canvas sacks. Seeking only those cubs still in their firm, pink, rectangular prime, the men bring their clubs down again and again and again ...”
Through the worldwide efforts of Greenpeace and the United Nations Committee on Fur and Harp Spam, the horrific slaughter on the stony Spam breeding grounds has abated. Except for the occasional poacher and the legal hunting allowed the native Beothuk, Inuit and Mi’kmaq tribes, this dark chapter in human history has ended.
Hormel Foods, the company that has marketed Spam since 1937, once argued that without the annual “thinning” of the Spam herds, overpopulation and disease would mete out a far crueler fate than the swift dispatch of the Spam cudgel. This has not proved to be the case.
Following the international harvesting ban, Hormel created a vast network of domestic Spam farms that now stretch from Missouri through Iowa to its headquarters in Austin, Minn. The town, located in the southeast corner of the state, proudly proclaims itself “Spam Town, USA.”
These rambling complexes typically consist of eight or nine tin-roofed “Spam houses,” each the size of a football field. Within these cramped quarters up to 300,000 Spamlettes quiver in uncertainty awaiting their day of “harvesting.” Crammed together in unspeakable conditions, the Spamlettes often turn on one another and their usual serene and tranquil demeanor becomes ugly. Each morning begins with culling crews wading through the shivering mass to remove Spamlettes that have suffered abuse and become cosmetically unappealing. These unfortunate souls, many already dead or dying, are tossed unceremoniously into boxes and taken to an outbuilding where they are ground into pellets, mixed with assorted grains and rendered into Spam feed.
As repulsive as that may be, Spam are fattened and brought to the 7-ounce market weight by eating a mixture that contains up to 15 percent Spam and Spam byproducts.
And just how much Spam is being consumed by wellmeaning folks such as our DeGray campers? Hormel boasts that “the historic eight billionth can was produced in 2010 — enough Spam cans to circle the Earth 18 times.” Further, they brag, “Americans consume an average of 3.8 cans of Spam every second, which equates to 228 cans per minute and 13,680 per hour.” More than 210 million cans of Spam were sold in the United States in 2010 (latest available figures), with the heaviest per capita users in Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas.
That’s a lot of misery being slapped between Wonder Bread and slathered with mustard.
Fortunately, there is an alternative that is sweeping the nation. Organic, free-range Spam are now being raised in backyards and on small farms all across America.
The Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center in Booneville leads the way in humane cultivation. The Spamlettes frolic and gambol until harvesting time at two months.
Sold every Saturday through September at the Booneville Farmers Market on Arkansas 10 (just west of the airport), the Spam sell for $7.50 a pound. Consumers may pick their fresh dinner Spam directly out of a large terrarium and pack them home in a cooler.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that adult Spam mate for life and produce up to 18 Spamlettes in each litter.