Pork: the other guilty meat

Humane treatment of pigs is on the menu this season.

from the March 29, 2007 edition

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'Don't ask, don't tell' won't cut it

The days of "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to animal farming are over. It's all there on the Internet. If you have the stomach for it, learn about pig slaughter. The Humane Slaughter Act of 1958 decrees that animals be rendered "insensitive to pain" before they are shackled and slaughtered, but there is insufficient compliance and enforcement. As they reach market weight, pigs raised for meat are put in overcrowded barren pens with concrete, wire mesh, or wood-slatted floors, without bedding materials or thermal protection. Young piglets endure physical mutilations, such as having their tails cut off to prevent tail biting (caused by stress in overcrowded conditions) and castration – procedures performed without anesthetic. Now imagine the stench from decaying fecal matter, ammonia, and other noxious fumes.

"It's only a pig," you say? We will go to any lengths to save a baby bird that has fallen from its nest. Yet, when it comes to the remarkably intelligent creatures that we carve up for dinner plates, we shrug.

Intelligent, affectionate pigs

Considered as smart as or smarter than dogs, pigs have been trained to discern images on a computer screen, and of course, to sniff out truffles. Clearly complex, they are, like Wilbur of "Charlotte's Web," capable of feeling pain and frustration, joy and excitement. They are kind, social animals capable of becoming domesticated and affectionate. They need company (as do we), and keeping them immobilized and in solitary confinement from birth to death is barbaric.

This information is what is facing me this Easter Sunday. Thankfully, some progress is being made. Smithfield Foods now will require its participating farms to raise pigs without gestation crates, in pens where sows are housed in groups. I hope others will follow. Meanwhile, 48 states continue to produce pork without farm animal welfare laws. We have to do better than this!

Forget the serious and similar plight of calves for the moment, put aside the cruelty of foie gras; many of us gave up eating those long ago. As far as cows, chickens, and turkeys go, of course we care, and living lobsters piled up with their claws tied in tanks need their advocates, too. But, this season, it's about the pig.

Nobler people than I eat only things that do not try to get away, and I profoundly admire and respect them. But living without bacon, salami, spare ribs, and my traditional Easter ham, is as hard for me as giving up music, or holidays, or nature. I will be careful where I buy that ham, to be sure. On the other hand, glaze and pineapple notwithstanding, until all pigs roam free on every farm in America, and the methods of slaughter become universally humane, our family's traditional dish may still leave us with a profoundly unpleasant aftertaste.

• Marlene Fanta Shyer is an author and playwright.

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