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US Federal Prisons Will No Longer Serve Pork to Their Inmates

Pork may soon become the contraband of choice in lock-ups across this nation because shit just got real for America’s 205,792 federal inmates. Let’s just hope this doesn’t cause an Attica-style uprising.
Photo via Flickr user kentwang

As any hardened jailbird will soon be able to attest, a high degree of Machiavellianism will be required to sneak a couple dozen pork belly rashers into a federal penitentiary. Pork may soon become the contraband of choice in lockups across this nation because shit just got real for America's 205,792 federal inmates.

Henceforth, absolutely no one incarcerated in one of this nation's 102 federal prisons will have the option of waking up to a piece of life-giving bacon. That's right: a new no-pork program has already started at the beginning of this month nationwide. The US Bureau of Prisons decided that for whole of 2016—which fiscally has already begun—there shall be no pork products to be had in federal prisons.

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BOP spokesperson Dana Williams told Quartz that the move was the result of an annual inmate survey. She said, "Year after year the most disliked item menu was pork." Really? Is that so? That must be some seriously shitty pork the prisons are serving. Especially when you consider that the prison system is cool with dishing out the dark stain on humanity that is Nutarloaf.

READ: The Internet Went Crazy Over a Rumor That Offices Are Banning Pork

In any event, the prison bureau is insisting that the no-pork-in-prison policy has nothing to do with preserving the religious freedoms of Muslims and Jews, many of whom do not indulge in piggy delights. Instead, the BOP insists, prisoners just don't like pork products.

"We try to be good stewards of government money. We don't want to be wasteful," Williams told Quartz.

We're not the only ones who are skeptical that prisoners aren't down with a little bacon in the morning. Or any other time. Dave Warner of the National Pork Producers Council told The Star-Telegram, "For people who are incarcerated, we understand that they're denied certain rights and freedoms but we don't think bacon should be one of them."

Then Warner said what everyone else is thinking: "I do find it hard to believe that the majority would say 'No thank you to bacon.'"

No kidding.

But the prison administrators aren't entirely heartless. They've got the prisoners covered as far as turkey bacon goes, which shall replace the real stuff.

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Not impressed?

How about pork rinds? These will still be available at prison commissaries.

It should be noted that prison administrators seem to really dislike paying for prisoner meals. The Marshall Project recently reported that at some facilities in this country, inmates are pretty much starving and receive only two meals a day, which can cost as little as 56 cents a piece.

READ: Florida Inmates Can Now Nosh on Kosher Meals

Prison officials are also probably not too eager to continue arguing about faith-based challenges to their menu choices, a matter that has reached the courts several times in recent years.

So no pork it is. Let's just hope this doesn't cause an Attica-style uprising.