Word: hogged
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...prosciutto. "The E.U. has closed off much of its market to us," reasoned Nick Giordano, a lawyer at the National Pork Producers Council. "We're looking for reciprocity, and one way to get it is nicking them on bananas." The council got pork added to the hit list. The hog farmers pushed to nail Dutch and Danish ham producers. But because those two countries had opposed the E.U.'s banana restrictions, the USTR said...
...course, at this point, no proposed remedy--including the idea of a "gilt lift" of 300,000 sows to hurricane-ravaged Central America--may do much for the independent hog farmer. George Bailey is one of that fading breed; he owns 650 sows in Walstonburg, N.C., and unlike corporate megafarms, isn't blessed with deep pockets. In the past year Bailey has had to use most of his savings just to stay afloat, and he still racked up $35,000 in additional debt. "We're slowly going broke," he notes. "The [meat] packers are making a killing...
Bailey isn't alone in his suspicions that something more than simple market forces is at play. Many farmers have pointed the finger at their Canadian brethren for flooding the market with swine, and are urging tougher import restrictions. Meanwhile, some critics believe that a few dominant corporate hog processors, like IBP or Smithfield, have unfairly profited from the farmers' misfortunes. "This isn't a matter of outmoded hog producers falling victim to the invisible hand of the market," says Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. "Pork in the grocery store costs the same now as six months ago. An anticompetitive...
...worried about, is one of those vaguely irritating phrases that sink to the bottom of public discourse and stay there like sludge. The mind's response, after the 20th hearing, is a weary "Yeah, yeah." Got to get the kids off to school. Got to invest in a hog factory, build on a floodplain, send bigger boats after fewer fish. Write a check to Greenpeace. Buy Exxon Mobil. And be sure to pick up some bottled water...
...agriculture, in which purely physical characteristics like milk production in a cow or low fat in a hog have real market value, biological carbon copies could become routine within a few years. This past year scientists have done for mice and cows what Ian Wilmut did for Dolly, and other creatures are bound to join the cloned menagerie in the coming year...