Ho Hum wrote:
You claim that it's "quite likely" that a pig in Oregon would've been uncastrated, but provide zero evidence that this is the case. Given that uncastrated boars are aggressive and said to taste worse, I don't see a reason to believe this. I would also question your assumption that local, pasture-raised pork will somehow be cheaper than factory farmed meat -- the opposite is usually true, for obvious reasons.
I didn't want to put too much of a spotlight on pork producers, but after reading their discussions online about how, and whether, to castrate their pigs, it became apparent that every pork farmer at some point has uncastrated male pigs that they would like to sell. There's also a very strong social movement in the last couple years against factory-farming of pork. Producers know this and would really prefer not to castrate if they don't have to, because it allows the boars to grow bigger (ironic, from an athletic perspective!). I also spent a lot of time reading the websites of pork farmers in Oregon and Washington, and most of them brag about their pasture-raised pork and non-reliance on corn feed. Below are a few links that demonstrate the aversion to castration.
The first page is a farmer talking about his taste/smell tests on boar taint, and just as informative are the comments from other farmers that follow: "We've now been not castrating for years and selling the piglets and pork to thousands of people. No taint. It is nice not to be castrating, for both the pig and the farmer." And about disguising boar taint, the other farmer responds, "You can always make chorizo!"
http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2010/09/eating-boar.htmlThe second is a discussion among small-time "homesteaders" who raise pigs about whether to use immunological castration or not.
https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/threads/improvest-vs-castration.433139/The third is a tough read on pig reproductive disorders, which again, is very ironic from an athletic perspective in light of recent controversies, but more importantly shows how pork producers are often left with pigs that have high levels of testosterone (and therefore, nandrolone) in their system that might be tainted, but still want to get rid of them. "This is unacceptable and people who are passing pigs on as being neutered knowing they're not ought to be ashamed of themselves..."
https://www.minipiginfo.com/complicated-mini-pig-reproductive-disorders.htmlLastly, this farm local to Oregon processes its own meat and would have been extremely busy during 2020, when the Midwest slaughterhouses shut down. On this page, look at the sausage they're making, and the relatively small size of the meat vat (compared to industrial processors in the Midwest). When the meat and byproducts of one or two pigs is used to make sausage, it's naturally more likely to have nandrolone than when an industrial-sized vat is used to make sausage from, say, 10 pigs at a time when such concentrations would get mixed up and diluted.
http://lonelylanefarms.com