Before You Eat That Next Pound Of Crispy Bacon, Want To Find Out How It's Made?

Bacon — ah, let us count the ways...

The thing about bacon, though, is that no matter how much of it at least some of us eat on an all-too-frequent basis, we probably don't know all that much about how it's made. We know that it comes from Mr. Pig. We know that it's cured or smoked or something. But how does it get from the animal to those shrink-wrapped packages at the A&P (or the butcher-paper-swaddled ones at the farmers market or artisanal meat shop)?

Doing a little research on precisely that subject recently, we came across a nifty little video called "Makin' Bacon: Inside the Processing of America's Favorite Meat Candy," made by the North American Meat Institute, a national trade organization representing companies that process 95 percent of the red meat and 70 percent of the turkey products in the United States. We thought it did a very efficient job of quickly but clearly explaining the steps involved in producing this food we all love so much, and they kindly agreed to let us share it with our readers.

For more on bacon, see the Meat Institute's Bacon Guide — and for much, much more about meat and poultry (including a video tour of a beef-processing plant with legendary animal welfare advocate Temple Grandin), see the Institute's YouTube page.