'Super pig' Prairie problem now approaching the U.S. border (tasty pork cutlets and ribs are heading in your direction)

AP via CBC News ^ | Nov 23, 2023 | Steve Karnowski

[jerod]

Hard-to-eradicate swine exploding in Canada and threatening to spill south of the border: expert

An exploding population of hard-to-eradicate "super pigs" in Canada is threatening to spill south of the border, and northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana are taking steps to stop the invasion.

In Canada, the wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat.

Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of Canada's leading authorities on the problem, calls feral swine, "the most invasive animal on the planet" and "an ecological train wreck."

They are often crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create what Brook describes as a "superpig" that's spreading out of control.

Pigs are not native to North America.

While they've roamed parts of the continent for centuries, Canada's problem dates back only to the 1980s when it encouraged farmers to raise wild boar, Brook said.

The market collapsed after peaking in 2001 and some frustrated farmers simply cut their fences, setting the animals free.

It turned out that the pigs were very good at surviving Canadian winters.

Smart, adaptable and furry, they eat anything, including crops and wildlife. They tear up land when they root for bugs and crops.

[Mr. Blond]

Oh give me a home, where the bison do roam? Doesn’t sound right.

[smokingfrog]

Good idea.

[Zhang Fei]

[And if that were true, people across the South would be dying in droves. We all eat them. I have shot a few with lice that are not harmful to humans but my family said they weren’t eating them so they went back to the woods. The buzzards gotta eat, same as the worm.]

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Oddly enough, bears accounted for almost half of the recent cases on record.

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https://honest-food.net/on-trichinosis-in-wild-game/
[Specifically, it assumes that if you freeze wild boar or some bear meat for 20 days at 5°F or lower the parasites will be rendered inert.

Note that freezing will not kill them, but it will prevent the wee beasties from attaching to you. Keep in mind that the 20 days start when the core of the meat reaches 5°F, which can actually take several days in most freezers. That’s why I freeze for at least a month with bear or wild boar I plan on making into salami, just to be sure. All of this applies to T. murrelli, too.

You can also kill any trichinae parasite by heat. And the “kill temperature” is a helluva lot cooler than you might think. The origin of the odd USDA mandated internal cooking temperature of 160°F appears to be the government trying to account for inaccuracy and idiocy. (That temperature is more relevant for salmonella than trich.) The actual temperature that kills the trichinella parasite is 137°F, which happens to be medium-rare.

But be forewarned: Every iota of meat must hit that temperature to kill the parasite, and cooking bear meat to medium-rare isn’t a guarantee of that. In fact, Steve Rinella and his crew ate rare bear meat in Alaska recently and most of them got trichinosis. Steve did a video about the experience here.

You can certainly make medium-rare bear meat safe using the sous vide method, but you’d need to hold the meat at 137°F for an hour or so to make sure — and then you’d want to sear it on the outside to kill any possible bacteria that survived that low temp. As for me? I like to sous vide bear at about 145°F for an hour or more, which is still a lovely tender and pink piece of meat, and is safe to eat that way.]

[crusty old prospector]

Thanks.