The emoji masters have been cooking up a new batch of symbols for us, and they are about ready to be served.
Bacon, avocado and pancakes are among 72 new emoji officially announced Thursday. The emoji are set to be released in Unicode 9.0 on June 21 by the Unicode Consortium, which makes final decisions about the universal emoji roster. Read more
AHDB Pork is launching a first-of-its-kind initiative for English pig producers and allied industry. The Focus Farm is centred on ‘hands-on’ involvement and aims to improve physical and financial pig performance. Read more
The decision to award the top prize to a pasty has generated debate about what constitutes a pasty and a pie Read more
China is in the middle of a pork crisis, with prices hitting record highs thanks to waning supply within China and a boom in consumption of the country’s favourite meat. Read more
A restaurant in Huntington Beach has just opened, with what the business describes as a to-go bacon bar. Saint Marc Pub-Cafe, Bakery and Cheese Affinage (that’s the real name) now has a bacon bar where customers can walk up and order 11 different types of bacon by the slice. Read more
A large group of investors this week urged big restaurant chains to fight the use of medically-important (to humans) antibiotics amongst their meat suppliers.
The investors asked the companies in the US and UK to produce a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the issue, and set out clear timelines for reducing antibiotic use. Read more
A meeting was held last week between pig producers and the senior management at Karro Food group to express their anger and frustration at the lack of progress towards achieving approval for the long awaited exports of Northern Irish pork meat. Read more
The younger generation are a pack of bacon-hating traitors, it has been revealed. Specifically, more than a quarter of people aged 18-24 say that they no longer include bacon in a Full English. Read more
The productivity of the UK pig breeding herd improved again in 2015, according to latest figures from Agrosoft, but the gain was smaller than in most recent years.
The number of pigs weaned per sow per year averaged 24.1 across all breeding herds, 0.2 more than in 2014. This is the smallest rise recorded since 2010, with increases of 0.4 to 0.6 in the intervening years. Both indoor and outdoor herds recorded similar improvements. Modest gains in the number of piglets born alive per litter and pre-weaning mortality were behind the rise in productivity, partly offset by a slight drop in the number of litters per sow. Read more
Heston Blumenthal has created the world’s most expensive bacon sandwich, admitting the fuel alone to send the meal into space for Major Tim Peake cost “a couple of million pounds”.
The Michelin-starred chef’s bacon butty was among seven dishes – from red Thai curry to apple crumble – he created for Peake to take into space with him, to remind him of home during his sixth-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Read more