Last Call: Would You Eat Raw Pork?

I have a few friends who are professional butchers, which, now that I think about it, is a weird way to start a conversation. They're talented at what they do, and during the pandemic they've been making meal kits to go, including dishes like steak tartare pre-cut into small cubes for you; the rest of the assembly is at home, where you're given aioli to mix into the raw beef with garnishes on the side.

It occurred to me that while I am fine with the concept of raw beef at this point in my life, before I tried it for the first time, I'm sure I was a little squeamish at the thought. These days the idea of a steak tartare sounds delicious and I don't bat an eye at it. But what about raw pork?

There's a dish in Germany called mett, which is a carefully prepared raw minced pork. It comes seasoned and usually ready to eat straight from the butcher, and it's made under strict guidelines to ensure the meat is safe to eat raw; precautions include keeping the meat at 35 degrees Fahrenheit at all times and only selling it the same day it's prepared. While the idea of eating raw pork might give a lot of people pause, that's probably due to concerns about trichinosis, a potentially lethal parasite that can be present in uncooked or undercooked meat. In modern times, however, this infection has become increasingly rare in pork. So, given the opportunity to eat some responsibly prepared mett, would you give it a shot?