In the Loire Valley of France, farmhouses have been making the same preserved meat for over 600 years. Pork, cooked slowly in its own fat with salt, shredded, packed into stoneware jars, and sealed under a cap of rendered lard. No refrigeration. No preservatives. No vacuum packaging. Just three ingredients and a process that kept families fed from autumn slaughter through late spring.

Your pork from the supermarket lasts three days in the fridge before it starts to turn. The industry solution is a cold chain stretching from slaughterhouse to processing plant to refrigerated truck to display case to your kitchen — a system so fragile that between 2012 and 2023, the USDA oversaw the recall of over 205 million pounds of food products. One break in that chain and the meat becomes dangerous. The medieval system had no chain to break.