‘Everything is about humanity.’ Chico-area farm takes new approach to raising pigs

Factory farms cause ongoing environmental impacts and can create new pandemics. So says hog-farmer Charlie Thieriot, whose Chico-area company is taking a different approach -- staying small, selling locally and using ethical and sustainable practices.

“What we’re trying to do is raise the pigs the right way and develop direct relationships with chefs and butchers,” said Thieriot, CEO of Llano Seco Meats, the branded arm of Rancho Llano Seco. “It’s a lot more work, but for the most part I know every customer by name.”

His is one of a small number of hog farms in California and it’s a major departure from the industry norm.. Most significantly, it allows its pigs to live outside.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDAERS), most large-scale hog operations confine pigs indoors. While that maximizes profits and keeps costs low, it also contributes to a trend toward fewer and larger enterprises concentrated in the Midwest and North Carolina.

USDAERS statistics indicate the overall number of farms with hogs nationwide has declined by over 70 percent since 1990 and the “trend toward fewer and larger enterprises has brought environmental issues to the forefront of public policy regarding the hog industry.”

The confinements systems also bring problems of water contamination due to hog lagoons and questions of humane treatment not only of animals but also of workers as seen at the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., where one of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 in a U.S. workplace occurred. Close conditions create stressed animals and put workers at risk for disease.

The different approach at Llano Seco is to implement costlier, more sustainable farming systems, then find smaller markets closer to home where customers are willing to pay more than the commodity prices that dictate what large factory farms receive for their products.

“We had to change the way we sell pigs,” Thieriot said. “We sell weekly. That was one of the things we had to figure out early. We found distributors that were smaller, more specialty distributors. And then we went and met with the chefs and met with the grocers.”

Farm’s other products include beans and walnuts

In contrast to large-scale confinement systems, Rancho Llano Seco has entered into land-use agreements with conservation groups and U.S. Fish and Wildlife that allow it to vary its agricultural production on its 18,000-acre site, growing heirloom beans, ancient grains, wheat, almonds and walnuts as well as raising pigs and beef. Some of the crops are sold commercially. Some are used for feed for its own animals.

The various crops grow amid intersections of wetlands, native forests and sloughs that serve as habitat for wildlife and pollinators. This symbiotic relationship of wild lands and agriculture that caters to a localized market is a model that Thieriot said he hopes “could be replicated around the country.”

The ranch is nestled in Butte County near Chico along the meandering east bank of the Sacramento River. It is a piece of California history, with original boundaries unchanged since the land was granted by Mexico Gov. Pio de Jesus Pico to a trapper named Sebastian Keyser in 1845. Thieriot’s ancestor, John Parrott, bought the parcel in 1861 and it has stayed in the family for six generations.

“My family back then weren’t farmers.” Thieriot said. “It was more sort of land speculation, most of them lived in San Francisco. The benefit of that was they weren’t aggressively exploiting the property. A lot of the acreage that we had was never farmed.”

Llano Seco pigs are a Duroc crossbreed, and the pork raising practices on the ranch adhere to third-party monitoring every 15 months through Global Animal Partnerships.

“It’s not a super exotic breed.” Thieriot said. “But it’s been bred to be the most relaxed and comfortable in this environment while producing the best meat.”

The farm’s pigs have a longer life cycle than others in the industry; they are 6 1/2 months old and weigh 300 pounds when they’re harvested. The average commodity pig is about 20 percent younger, according to Thieriot.

Overall focus is reducing stress on pigs

He said that the longer life cycle not only ensures the finished meat is more marbled and overall tastier, but it enables the company to avoid speed-growing the pigs by putting antibiotics in their food. Overall, he said, the focus is on reducing stress for pigs that live on dirt in open pens complete with mud wallows.

“The way the animals are treated, everything is about humanity,” said production manager Don Sinnott. “Particularly the way they are housed and penned. For instance, we only have 325 sows at the moment because when it gets up to 100 degrees, they need all the room they can get.”

The model is a “night and day” difference from conventional practices, according to Sinnott, who has about 40 years of industry experience, much of it raising hogs in the factory farming model in the Midwest.

“Here, we give them what we call enrichments. We give them straw to play with. In some cases we give them balls,” Sinnott said. “That’s just totally flipped from what I was doing in the factory world.”

Challenges that come with raising pigs outdoors include “biosecurity,” meaning preventing disease and contamination from wildlife and parasites in the dirt. This adds expense in the form of deworming medication and parasite prevention.

“We’ve got wild turkeys flying in and eating out of the same trough,” Sinnott said. “Those are things in the confinement world that you wouldn’t have.”

But stress-free pigs are worth it, according to Sinnott. He said it feels good to raise them right and that the finished product is far superior to anything from the factory system as stress hormones degrade a pig’s body, just as they do with humans.

“It’s kinda neat for me to come out here,” Sinnott said. “Pigs wanna do what pigs wanna do, and this is natural behavior for them. We put fences around them, but we really don’t do anything else to disrupt their way of life.”

Gonzalo Gonzales, a grower/finish unit technician, agreed that animal welfare is part of his job. In the finishing barns where hogs ready for market are kept, the technicians are instructed to guide pigs using wall-like planks instead of prods to move them into different areas.

“Rule No. 1 is never hit the animals,” Gonzales said. “Rule No. 2 is to maintain ‘happy pigs,’ with their water and food, to make sure they are inside when it’s too hot and keep them as clean as possible.”

Responsible animal husbandry is one of Llano Seco’s “core values,” Theriot said, along with conservation and sustainability.

Because of the blended agricultural and animal husbandry model at Rancho Llano Seco, they are able to grow 75 percent of the feed the pigs eat, largely removing themselves from the commodity feed market as well.

“One of the most sustainable things we do is raise the feed for the pigs,” Thieriot said. “What a lot of people don’t understand is the carbon footprint on each bite of food they take.

“The pigs are being shipped from the Midwest or the Southeast and the feed is bought on the open market. A pig eats three times its weight in feed, and that feed is coming from Argentina, Brazil, China, Canada, wherever the price is right, and the harvest season is happening. So, you can imagine the mileage on each bite of pork.”

Catering to innovative chefs

Selling the whole pig and relying on chefs and consumers to use unconventional cuts is essential for his business model to work well, Thieriot said. Not only does using parts like the feet cut down on waste of the animal, but a lot of chefs “believe in it from a craft side.”

One of Thieriot’s favorite dishes is made from the feet. It was prepared by Tuscan butcher Dario Cecchini who he said is “a hero of mine now.”

“He takes the foot, and he cuts it in half and pickles it and puts garlic on, then he dries it in the refrigerator and hangs it up,” Thieriot said. “This all takes almost a month. Then he puts it in a pot of beans and nothing else, and it is hands down the best pot of beans I’ve ever had. Mind-blowing.”

On keeping the market for his products close, Thieriot said Rancho Llano Seco is lucky to be near not only the Bay Area but Sacramento, Chico and Santa Cruz.

“These towns really care about where their food comes from, and they understand when we’re talking about how we raise our pigs,” Thieriot said. “The added benefit is having a brand and selling direct to customers, getting out of that nameless, faceless price-taking commodity system. There has to be a reason for people to buy our product, we gotta be firing on all cylinders.”

Thieriot said his product is more expensive than factory-farmed meat but many people are willing to pay more because it tastes better and because of his “ethical” practices.

“But if they’re not seeing the animals and how they’re raised, it’s much easier for big food companies with expensive marketing budgets to hide any bad behavior,” he said..

Sacramento restaurants that serve Llano Seco meats include Waterboy, One Speed, Dawson’s Steakhouse, The Firehouse Restaurant, Localis and Magpie. Butcher shops and grocers include V. Miller Meats, Taylor’s Market, Nugget Markets in the Sacramento area, as well as the Midtown Farmer’s Market.