Hawaiian Cultural Assumption
Hawaiian Cultural AssumptionPig sandwich: first, you catch a pig...
"Pig sandwich" seems to be common parlance for Bar-BQ pork in mainland U.S. as well, but it comes from farms instead of the woods. In Hawaii, pigs were an introduced species. They have proliferated and become very destructive. Thus, it is sound environmental policy to eat as many pigs as possible. Fortunately, they are delicious. What's funny is that with all the pigs running around the islands, they import thousands from the mainland every year. Yep, that pork you ate at the Luau actually came from Ohio. What they really need here is to develop a taste for BBQ cat. There are tens of thousands of feral cats on Maui alone.
Most people don't like to eat species that they regard as pet species. Comparatively few people keep pigs as pets, comparatively many people keep cats as pets; it would seem to be a losing battle.
But tell me, with all those wild pigs you say are running around the islands (as a mere sometime visitor to the Hawaiian islands, I haven't really noticed them, but there's probably some reason why not), why does anyone import "thousands from the mainland every year"? There must be some reason, yeah? Else it would just be cheaper to use the ones that are already running around.
Well... first, you gotta catch wild pigs. Wild pigs, especially boars, can be rather nasty.
Second, many prefer to eat pigs that have been fattened up on the farm, to the leaner variety which roam the woods. You ain't gonna get a nice thick ham, marbled with fat, or succulent baby-back ribs, covered in meat, off a wild pig. Some may prefer game pigs, as the meat is likely leaner; but those accustomed to eating farm-raised pork will likely be disappointed.
Third, there's the issue of slaughtering them. Large scale slaughterhouses are unpleasant things to have around, for numerous reasons; which is why many prefer having them in some agricultural area, and importing pigs which are already dead, skinned, and hanging on a meathook.
Finally, modern factory agriculture is quite efficient, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that importing pork from the mainland is cheaper than catching, killing, and butchering it locally.
As a one-time resident of the islands, I'd hazard a guess that the shipping costs are still large - for items like food, they might dwarf the production costs. That said, most food items don't have local substitutes. Hell, even the pineapple is grown locally only for tourism purposes - the grocery stores get the fruit from South America!
The idea of importing pigs from the mainland wouldn't sound so strange, if pigs were significantly cheaper on the mainland than on the islands, and if shipping costs were trivial. But isn't there some draconian law that makes it horrendously expensive to ship to and from Hawaii, due to requirements of using only American-owned and American-operated vessels to ship it?
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(last edited February 28, 2008)
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