About the Trans Fat Free Crisco, there's really a marketing ploy going on here. If you look at the ingredients, there is some hydrogenated oil (palm I think). What happens is that for a serving, there winds up being something like 0.49 grams - and the labeling standards allow the companies to round down to zero grams, to advertise it as having 0 grams.
LOL - it's the same marketing "ploy" that is going on with your 0g Trans Fat butter. If a serving size portion is less than 0.5g - like 0.4999, it can be rounded down to 0, 0.999 can be rounded down to 0.5. There is no mandate to round up. It's the way the government set up the rules.
THEY have spend so much time denigrating hydrogenated anything that people don't know the difference between something "partially" hydrogenated and something "fully" hydrogenated. And, people don't know that some things have Trans Fats naturally. The fat, milk, butter, cheese from ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats, bison, buffalo, venison, etc. - any animal with two stomachs) contains Trans Fat.
Partially hydrogenated oil has trans fats - the structure of unsaturated fats is changed from a CIS configuration to a TRANS configuration - it is still unsaturated but acts like a saturated fat as far as prolonging shelf-life ... the body treats it differently, it raises the bad cholesterol and lowers the good (the same amount).
Fully hydrogenated fats are a little different - it converts the unsaturated fats into saturated fats, not trans fats. These are mixed with NON-hydrogenated fats to make an almost totally trans fat free product - like the new Crisco, Armour lard, etc. You wind up with something with the properties of shortening - without the trans fat.
Professional bakers use different fats/blends of fats for different reasons - flavor and melting points which affect both texture and flavor. I know one company makes a baking shortening that includes totally hydrogenated coconut oil.
I talked with someone at ConAgra this afternoon - it appears that "Armour" lard - although a mix of lard and "hydrogenated" lard - may be almost 0% trans fat since it is made from lard and fully hydrogenated flake lard. She is going to get one of their chemists to call me back so I can confirm this.
So, - unless your going to give up beef/lamb, milk, butter and cheese - don't worry about the small amount of trans fats you might get from Crisco or lard. Like you said - you don't make pies a major part of your diet. Why eat an inferior crust made with butter when it may actually contain more trans fat than using lard?
[EDIT: I left out a word - Fully hydrogenated fats are mixed with NON-hydrogenated fats.]