Okay so October is almost over and I’ve neglected National Pork month.  Well, I haven’t totally neglected, we’ve had smoked pork loin and then there’s all the bacon we consume.  Every year the average American eats nearly 18 pounds of bacon.  In the past 10 years, bacon has grown into an industry generating more than $4 billion in annual sales. It’s gone from the breakfast table to a whole array of foods, bacon flavored milk shakes, for instance.  Our national obsession with bacon has been a real boom for the pork industry.

Pigs save lives? It’s long been said we use “everything but the squeal” of a pig.  Pork is a source of niacin and other nutrients and pig heart valves have long been used as replacement for human’s valves. Now researchers in Cambridge Massachusetts are a bit closer to raising pigs whose organs and all other tissues can be transplanted into humans.  eGenesis is a bio tech company that is gene-editing to modify DNA in pig cells, that can remove viruses that make pig organs unsuitable for humans.   When these virus free pigs are created, it will be the first step in making them suitable for transplanting their organs to humans. When this happens, a whole flood or transferrable organs and tissues would become available.

That is just amazing!  If we could raise pigs for not only the protein we need but use their organs and tissue to prolong human life, that would be quite the success story for technology.  We would literally, “use everything but the squeal”.

In the U.S alone, almost 117,000 people are awaiting a lifesaving organ transplant, according to the United Network for Organ sharing.

So celebrate Pork month, go have yourself a BLT, bacon burger, bacon sundae, bacon milk shake, bacon wrapped jalapeno pepper, bacon brownie…