The market for your fancy hams just got more crowded

LIKE Kobe beef and halibut sushi, much of what you see labelled as jamón ibérico is fake. Though the narrative of acorn-fattened pigs roaming the woodlands of western Spain is popular, it appears to be a misleading one: Most ibérico pigs spend their short, unremarkable lives slopping up provender on factory farms.

Since the price and quality of jamón ibérico vary widely - high-end examples can fetch more than US$200 a pound (450 grammes) - Spain's Ministry of Agriculture rolled out designations a few years back that minimise the guesswork. White, green and red tags denote pork that's typically mixed-breed and frequently fed with grain, not acorns. Purebred, acorn-fed ibérico pigs are tagged with black labels.

Outside the Iberian Peninsula, where shoppers are less conversant in Spanish ham-speak, the colour-coded tags will likely prove more useful. Roughly 20,000 tonnes of the black-hoofed hams were exported last year alone, up 25 per cent from the year before. Some 80 per cent of exported ibérico goes to European Union countries such as Germany, Italy, Portugal and France. Japan, the US and Mexico make up the majority of the remaining 20 per cent.