Michael RosensteinGiving “potbellied pig” new meaning.
Ah, Washington state: where you can legally smoke pot, marry your same-sex partner, and buy liquor in the grocery store. And as if that weren’t enough, now you can go to Pike Place Market and buy pork chops made from weed-fed pigs:
Part flavor experiment, part green recycling, part promotion and bolstered by the legalization of recreational marijuana in Washington state, pot excess has been fed to the hogs by their owners, pig farmer Jeremy Gross and Seattle butcher William von Schneidau, since earlier this year.
Gross and von Schneidau now sell their “pot pig” cuts at von Schneidau’s butcher shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market at a premium price — bacon is $17 a pound while chops go for $16.90 a pound.
The unfortunately named Gross claims the pork’s savory flavor is similar to alfalfa-fed pigs or cows — but it won’t get you high. (The cravings for cheesy breadsticks are TOTALLY unrelated.) And pigs are already too carefree to really see if it makes a difference:
Asked if feeding marijuana affects the pigs, such as perhaps giving them munchies, Gross said [he] can see no effect on the pigs. Already all pigs do is sleep and eat, he said. But his farm manager mentioned that one of the more salty sows mellows out after a feeding.
We should all be so lucky.
