Originally Posted by
Jeff Michel
Salted hog casings are just about indestructible, but they will spoil if mishandled. They should be stored under refrigeration to keep the smell down. The holes in natural casings are from round worms. Fun fact: Casings haven't been produced as usable product in the US for years. All the Hog casings sold in the US are imported from China. In several hog slaughtering plants I visit, salvage the intestines, salt them, box them and send them to the PRC for further processing. You can imagine the difficulty finding a person who wants to clean and scrape intestines for a living, that's why it got moved out of this country. And all the Processing plants that use casings get them from the same source. This does not include sheep or collagen casings.