A wave of revulsion has swept across food enthusiasts after a Discovery Channel UK documentary resurfaced on YouTube, revealing the process of bacon production.
he programme, which originally aired in 2018, has left viewers vowing to never eat bacon again due to their “disgust” at the manufacturing process.
“Bacon is now processed and even pre-cooked in factories,” the documentary begins, detailing how pork bellies are tossed into a giant tumbler to soften the meat and make skin removal easier. The softened bellies are then stretched out and placed face down on a conveyor belt, which takes them through a slicer to remove the skin.
As the skin heads off to be turned into crackling, the meat is flipped over by a device. Further along the line, workers create a brine solution to cure the pork.
“Salt is funnelled into a tank of water and mixed thoroughly until it dissolves. Then, liquid smoke and flavourings are added before the bellies pass under an ‘injector head’, the needles of which inject the curing solution into the meat,” explains Discovery. The process continues with a “comb” being pressed into the bellies so they can be hung from a rack.
“Then, it’s into a drench cabinet for a shower of liquid smoke,” adds the narrator. “This adds flavour and colour to the surface before the bellies are transferred to a large oven where they are cooked for five hours at a low temperature”.
The meat, now infused with flavour, is then moved to a blast freezer for cooling before being transferred to a second cooler for approximately two days. “The cooling firms the meat making it easier to slice”, explains the documentary.
The bellies are then sized appropriately and passed through a metal detector to ensure no fragments of the metal hangers have become embedded in the meat. “After that, the bellies are wrapped and stored in a freezer until its time to slice them into bacon”, Discovery reveals.
“Here [in the slice line], workers load the meat into chutes which rotate back and forth over a blade, slicing the bellies into bacon-shaped pieces. The process culminates with the bacon moved on another conveyor belt, taking it through a browning microwave – with excess fat drained off to create gravy and pet foods”, provides the voiceover.
The process concludes with the bacon being moved on another conveyor belt, taking it through a browning microwave – with surplus fat drained off to produce gravy and pet foods. “The cooked bacon then exits the microwave oven, where it appears under the watchful eyes of inspectors who discard broken and unsatisfactory rashers”.
Wheels transport the bacon onto parchment paper, before finally it is ready for packing.
After viewing the informative clip, some YouTube users reacted with shock, one of whom commented: “I have lost so much weight since I’ve been watching how food is made. All the things I love to eat looks down-right gross to me”.
A second criticised: “Oh well, bacon is off the menu for me after watching this video. I have a feeling that ham will be going the same way after seeing what is done to it!”.
A third confessed their unease, saying: “Whenever I watch these videos I always think I wonder how often the nasty meat scraps get cleaned off the machines. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies for meat to get lost in”.
Meanwhile, a fourth bluntly stated: “If you eat bacon after this video, it serves your insides right.”
Yet not everyone was deterred, with one viewer joking: “This video has been lurking on my recommended [videos] for days and succeeding only in making me hungry . . . all this damned delicious bacon isn’t going to eat itself! ”
Another commented positively: “Came here expecting to be put off bacon for life, left wanting bacon”.