...Raising pigs, apparently, was the only way the farmer knew how to make a living, so he did it even though, as was becoming evident the more we talked, he didn’t like one bit the direction hog farming was going. At times, as he spoke about how much he hated the modern factory methods of pork production, he reminded me of the very animal rights people who a few minutes before he said he wished would drop dead...
The Pig Farmer by John Robbins is definitely worth reading. Discovered via Groovy Green.
5 comments:
I feel so bad for the little piggies and chickens. It really makes me melancholy.
@Edgar,
At least he gave up hog farming for organic vegetables, but this part in particular saddened me:
Evidently the pig could swim, for she would plop herself into the water, swim out where the dog was bothering the boy, and insert herself between them. She’d stay between the dog and the boy, and keep the dog at bay. She was, as best I could make out, functioning in the situation something like a lifeguard, or in this case, perhaps more of a life-pig.
I’m listening to this hog farmer tell me these stories about his pet pig, and I’m thoroughly enjoying both myself and him, and rather astounded at how things are transpiring, when once again, it happens. Once again a look of defeat sweeps across this man’s face, and once again I sense the presence of something very sad. Something in him, I know, is struggling to make its way toward life through anguish and pain, but I don’t know what it is or how, indeed, to help him.
“What happened to your pig?” I ask.
He sighs, and it’s as though the whole world’s pain is contained in that sigh. Then, slowly, he speaks. “My father made me butcher it.”
“Did you?” I ask.
“I ran away, but I couldn’t hide. They found me.”
“What happened?”
“My father gave me a choice.”
“What was that?”
“He told me, ‘You either slaughter that animal or you’re no longer my son.’”
Some choice, I think, feeling the weight of how fathers have so often trained their sons not to care, to be what they call brave and strong, but what so often turns out to be callous and closed-hearted.
“So I did it,” he says, and now his tears begin to flow, making their way down his cheeks. I am touched and humbled. This man, whom I had judged to be without human feeling, is weeping in front of me, a stranger. This man, whom I had seen as callous and even heartless, is actually someone who cares, and deeply. How wrong, how profoundly and terribly wrong I had been.
During lunch I was reading _Waiting_ by Ha Jin and came across this cruel but funny piglet passage:
Last week Bensheng went to Wujia Town to sell piglets, a whole litter of them. Before he left, he sewed up four of their buttholes with flaxen thread. He wanted to make them weigh more. When he showed the piglets at the marketplace, folks wanted to buy the four fat ones. Fact is those fat ones with their butts blocked up weren’t fat at all. They were heavier and worth more, only ‘cause they couldn’t crap, almost burst. Bengshen was just about to take the money from a buyer when the guy thought, “Well, how come these four rascals are so clean?” The other piglets all dropped a pile of crap behind them. He looked closer and saw huge bulges on the four fat piglets’ butts. He shouted, “Look, the big suckers all have a sewed-up butthole.”
Okay, since pigs don't read, here's another.
A man visits a pig farm and the farmer points out a pig with only three legs. He says, you see that pig? That pig saved my life. I was passed out in the pond and he pulled me to safety. The other fella says: "What happened to his leg?" The farmer sez: A good pig like that you don't eat all at once.
@Edgar,
That's worse than sewing their buttholes!
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