Pigs, and why I don’t eat them
2006 Mar 12
Eating pork is part of the
culture in the UK. – pork pies, bacon butties, bangers and mash, sausage rolls,
the “full English” breakfast.
As a general rule, I don’t eat pork. This can be awkward - I often go
for the veggie option, to avoid having to explain why I don’t eat pig…
The last time I ate pork was at the Subud World Congress in August 2005.
I had ordered a cheese omelette, and my friend Lionnel had ordered ham and
cheese. The waitress brought two ham and cheese omelettes, I didn’t want to
make a fuss as we were on a tight schedule, so I tucked in. It was very tasty.
The time before that was at the EuroForth conference in 2002, in Germany. Pork
steaks were the only option on the menu. Very tasty.
But I would prefer not to eat pork. Here are my reasons :
The Jewish, Christian and Moslem traditions forbid their followers from
eating pigs.
I was told as a child, in Methodist ( Christian ) Sunday school that
this was because “in the olden days” they didn’t have refrigerators, electric
ovens nor an understanding of food hygiene, so they could inadvertently eat the
eggs of the Liver Fluke from an infected pig, which could then make them ill.
Death by Liver Fluke, which can infect both pigs and humans, is extremely
unpleasant, so would have confirmed the ancient wisdom that pigs are somehow
“unclean”.
My father says that when he was young, pork was seen as the “poor mans”
meat. These days it has become something of a delicacy, with a price similar to
beef.
The Bible mentions that Jesus cast out “evil spirits” and sent them into
a herd of swine, than caused the swine to jump over a cliff to their deaths
(http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%208:28-33;%20Mark%205:1-21;%20Luke%208:26-40).
The job of swineherd seems to have been the lowest of the low. I have often
wondered why a society that didn’t eat swine would need swineherds… The message
is clear – pigs are not good to eat.
The Koran says that it is not a sin to eat pork if you are forced to,
but that otherwise it is forbidden
(http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-koran?specfile=/lv2/english/relig/koran/www/koran.o2w&act=surround&offset=40434&tag=Koran.002&query=swine).
I don’t follow advice, religious or otherwise, without some kind of
proof. I do however use the “proven in use” argument that a significant
proportion of the world’s population, throughout most of recorded history, have
thought that it is not a good idea to eat pigs.
Pigs have a similar immune system to our own. This is why the Liver
Fluke can infect both species, and so can many other diseases. “Swine fever”
and other infections can be caught by the people that look after pigs, which is
why they wear face masks when feeding them. Clearly, if the pork is not
properly cooked, any bugs that the pig had could infect the person eating it. I
know from a very unpleasant experience what happens if you eat a pork chop that
has gone beyond its “use by” date. Back in 1984, I was young, single and
hungry. I grilled a pork chop that had been in the fridge for too long.
Presumably I charred the outside without fully cooking the inside. It smelt “a
bit funny” as it was cooking, but in true Homer Simpson style, I ate it anyway.
It was the worst illness of my life. I was totally incapacitated for three very
unpleasant days. Occasionally there are outbreaks of E-coli bacteria which kill
a few people. I can relate to that. The experience made me think about what I
eat, so it had at least one positive effect. It also meant that if I ever smell
pork cooking I feel nauseous. This is my subconscious reminding me that my body
doesn’t like to be poisoned…
Mad Cow Disease ( BSE ) and Kiri-kiri are two illnesses that show what
happens if you create a habitat where certain bugs can spread. BSE happens if
you feed cows with sheep that have the sheep form of the disease. Kiri-kiri
happens when cannibals eat people with the infection. How this works is not
fully understood, at least by me, but it seems to involve “prions” – tiny parts
of a virus or bacterium that are not destroyed by cooking, but somehow manage
to reproduce. Obviously, cows do not naturally eat sheep – they were fed sheep
offal as part of the ingredients of their food pellets. Clearly it is best to
feed cows what they have evolved to eat – grass and hay.
Cannibals eat the livers of their defeated enemies to “gain their
strength”. If their victims had any bugs, they will absorb those too.
The message is : don’t eat anything that might have had a disease that
you can catch.
There is a joke/urban legend about a western tourist in a Korean
restaurant who gestures to the waiter by pointing to her mouth and then to her
pet dog, trying to ask the waiter to feed her dog. The waiter then returns
having cooked her dog as the main course. In the UK we do not think of dog as a
food, rather as a pet, and the joke relies on this cross-cultural clash for its
comedic tension.
We tend not to eat “social animals” - ones that live in a group, where
its friends would be upset it we killed it. Dogs and higher primates fall into
this category, and maybe horses.
In November 2003 I was working on the ACE project
(http://www.inventio.co.uk/threeforthsmakeahole.htm). The location was a
factory near Diss in Norfolk, heart of the pig-rearing area of England. The
factory was next door to a pig farm, and I spent one night there with only two
sheets of corrugated iron and a few feet of space between me and the inmates of
the pig farm. It was obvious that pigs are social animals. I could hear their
“conversations” – the pecking order arguments, the bored rattling of their
cages. As a result of this I really try my hardest never to buy pork products
or support the pig farming business in any way.
Pigs are intelligent animals. Think of a large barn packed full of big
dogs. The RSPCA would close you down.
I watched a TV program about pig farming. OK, it was made in the
seventies, and surely things have changed? After all, this is the 21st
century and we have left the “greed is good”, “everything’s fine if it makes a
profit” attitudes of the last century? Apparently piglets have their two front
teeth removed to prevent them from biting each other. They are packed into
pigsties for 6 to 8 weeks to fatten up. The pigsties are washed out weekly, so
the smell is very unpleasant – another reason why the people wear face masks.
I always try to buy free-range chickens and eggs – I don’t like factory
farming.
I buy organic milk in the hope that at least the cows ate well, even
though I have problems with the way calves are parted from their mothers as
part of the dairy farming process.
I have even more of a problem with pig farming - I refuse to have
anything to do with it.
Pork, ham, bacon, pork pies and sausages all taste good.
Ancient wisdom and my interpretation of modern science say that its not
good to eat pigs.
In my experience, pig farming is cruel.
I don’t eat pigs!
Howerd Oakford 2006 Mar 12