ABOVE: The pork packeged ready for sale. A thai pork curry from Bang Thai restaurant in Bangalow using the Bangalow Sweet Pork.

  “We were fed up with working in an industry where people kept saying to us: ‘Why are pigs so poor, why do they taste badly’,” Joe said.
  “The real objective was to make pork taste properly again because we’re old enough to know that all the pork used to taste like that years ago, all the meat used to taste nice.”
  “We believe that there’s been signifcant changes about eating quality of meat. No fat, no flavour, no moisture, no tenderness,” Joe added.
   As a result, Bangalow Sweet Pork focussed on choosing breeds which weren’t as lean and subsequently didn’t “constrain fat by manipulating the diet.”
   With the meat right “first go” the hard yards for the company were in the marketing.
  "We won’t compromise the quality,” Joe asserts. “Finding consumers wasn’t a problem, but trying to find the right butchers, smallgoods people, processors and all that (was more involved).
  “It’s a niche market and it will always be a niche market. It’s only for the people who pay enough emphasis on good food...,” he explained.
   Bangalow Sweet Pork is antibiotic and hormone free and Joe said an analysis of the fat content found that it is 63 per cent unsaturated, a statistic he hopes will appease concerns consumers have about saturated fat consumption.
   The product is currently available to retail consumers in three Australian states and Joe is working towards national distribution by the end of 2005.

  The meat is processed on the far north coast with carcasses supplied directly to butchers for the retail market. It is also packaged into cartons for restaurant and wholesale distribution by providores such as Black Pearl Epicure in Brisbane and Darryl Kinneally from Cape Byron Foods, who speaks highly of the product’s quality.
   Bangalow Sweet Pork also has a large Sydney based food distributor, Vic’s Premium Quality Meat, which supplies restaurants in other states, so it isn’t unusual for Joe to receive emails praising the product from diners as far afield as Melbourne and Darwin.
   Positive comments from visiting American diners have also inspired initial enquiries into the competitive US market.
   For those not au fait with cooking pork, Joe says the high standards of modern quality control ensure you can serve it as you would beef - medium rare is fine if it suits your taste.
   And while some may remember being served pork with oily baked potatoes, and overcooked green vegies, these days, in a nod to the eclectic palate of the modern Australian, you’re just as likely to find it in a Thai green coconut curry.

Pigs are naturally fat and Bangalow Sweet Pork does not constrain this fat, unlike some others in the industry.
• Changed production methods by Bangalow Sweet Pork increased the amount of unsaturated fat in the pork to over 60 per cent to help allay fears for those with concerns about saturated fat consumption.
• There is no genetic modi?cation used and Bangalow Sweet Pork is hormone and antibiotic free.
• Processing is done on the NSW north coast, with many butchers receiving full carcasses directly, and consumers subsequently buying their preferred selection of cuts.
• For the wholesale market, the meat is boned and packaged on the far north coast and sent out in carton form to local providores and restaurant distributors who hand deliver it to a selection of eateries.
• The packaging plant also makes some bacon for those butchers without the facilities to make their own.
• Consumers buying the product from the retail market are advised to cook pork as they would their favourite piece of steak.
• Cuts for roasting are shoulder and leg; if you want to grill, pan-fry or barbecue use rump steaks, shoulder and loin chops; and for curries, stews and casseroles use diced shoulder

THE PROCESS
• The first step is the ‘breeding and the feeding’ on the NSW north coast.