Chinese Pigs

Support Compassion in World Farming

 

 

I. 

 

The pig has historical, cultural and even astrological significance in China. 

 

And whilst the pig hasn't always had the best of reputations amongst Westerners, the Chinese have traditionally associated this intelligent and sociable animal with positive things, such as wealth and happiness. 

 

And good eating: for whilst the Chinese consume pretty much anything under the sun, it's pork that has long been the main source of protein in their diet. 

 

In a country of 1.4 bilion people, that means a lot of pigs have to be reared each year; which means in turn that industrial farming has to be elevated to a whole new level - in fact, to multiple new levels ...  

 

 

II.

 

The world's biggest single-building pig farm has just opened in Hubei province, central China; a 26-story Tötungszentren, with a capacity to slaughter 1.2 million pigs each year. This is the Communist Party's solution to the people's insatiable demand for pork. 

 

The first few thousand unlucky sows were admitted to the farm - if we can still use this term - at the beginning of last month. When fully operational - and when a second building of equal size is finished - this pigsty in the sky will house around 650,000 animals, who will be monitored from a central control room and fed via 30,000 automatic feeding spots, operated at the click of a button. 

 

Temperature and ventilation will be controlled by an artificially-intelligent computer system. Waste material will be treated on site and used to generate energy in the form of biogas. Workers will be required to be screened for disease and subject to multiple rounds of disinfection before they can enter or leave the farm; not that they can leave apart from when taking a weekly break.

 

Supporters say this high-rise production model is cost efficient, biosecure, and environmentally-friendly, compared to traditional farming methods. They tend not to comment on the welfare of the poor pigs in such stressful and unnatural conditions. 

 

Critics, on the other hand, argue that large-scale intensive farms ultimately increase the likelihood of serious disease outbreaks - as well as increase the potential for infectious pathogen mutation, which just might cause us to get sick and die:

 

"China is not the only country facing challenges from emerging zoonotic diseases, but it has become clear that the country faces bureaucratic, societal and ecological factors that magnify them into global threats" [1].

 

Which is a sober note to end on - though one that might make any pigs dreaming of a way to extract a symbolic revenge upon a human order that treats them with such cruelty and contempt, squeal with delight [2].       

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting from an article by Michael Standaert and Francesco De Augustinis, The Guardian (18 Sept 2020): click here.

 

[2] See the post entited 'Zoonosis: Revenge of the Animals' (19 Sept 2018): click here.

 

For an earlier post in which I write in praise of the pig, click here. 

In Praise of the Pig

Whilst the dietary injunction against eating pork first arose in primitive Judea, it is within the Islamic world where the pig itself has become truly taboo; i.e. both hated and feared. This horror of all things pig is often taken to ridiculous extremes in an attempt to eradicate all thought of an animal that is to the Muslim mind an abomination. 

This is, like all taboos, absurd and something of a shame. For pigs are extremely versatile and loveable creatures; intelligent, social, and, when living in natural conditions, fastidiously clean. They are also, of course, closely related to us. Indeed, according to the American biologist Eugene MacCarthy, who specializes in hybrid evolution, humanity is the result of interspecies breeding between chimpanzees and pigs. 

This is a sensational claim, obviously, which has received a good deal of criticism and scorn from the scientific community, but the fact remains that we do share a great deal of DNA with our porcine cousins and this has allowed for successful organ transplant between pigs and people.

Perhaps it is this closeness which lies at the heart of the religious belief shared by many millions that the pig is diabolical and that - in the words of Christopher Hitchens - heaven hates ham. In a provocative passage, Hitchens counters the modern 'secular' explanation of the original Jewish prohibition to do with health and safety: 

"According to many ancient authorities, the attitude of early Semites to swine was one of reverence as much as disgust. The eating of pig flesh was considered as something special, even privileged and ritualistic. The simultaneous attraction and repulsion derived from an anthropomorphic root: the look of the pig, and the taste of the pig, and the dying yells of the pig, and the evident intelligence of the pig, were too uncomfortably reminiscent of the human. Porcophobia - and porcophilia - thus probably originate in a nighttime of human sacrifice and even cannibalism at which the 'holy' texts often do more than hint. Nothing optional [like bacon sandwiches or sodomy] is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate."

- Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great, (Atlantic Books, 2008), p. 40.

In sum, the pig is a noble beast, dear to the hearts and palates of Europeans, and we should ignore demands by Muslim zealots to remove all traces of the pig from our culture. We should also, however, seriously reconsider our own treatment of the pig and end the disgusting cruelty of factory farming. They deserve better than to be vilified by those who allow religious superstition to distort their relationship to the animal world and they deserve more than being confined, separated from their young, and forced to live in their own waste.