Diet for a New America 25th Anniversary Edition. John Robbins
biggest clusters I had ever seen. Going to the trees, I selected and cut the finest bunch I could find, as big round as my cap, and weighing over a pound. This I deposited in his trough and invited him to try it. He sniffed at it a little doubtfully, and looked at me and made a remark or two, then nibbled at the edge of the cluster, taking a few berries into his mouth, and holding them some time before he ventured to crush them. At length he did venture, then looked at me and made more remarks, “Queer fruit this! Never tasted anything like it before, but I really can’t say yet whether I like it or not.”
Then he took another bite, then more bites, looking up at me and saying something between the bites, ’til, little by little, he had consumed the whole bunch; then, turning round, he went back to his bed with a little grunt to say that I was now at liberty to go on to the cows and horses.
However, the following morning he hailed my approach in such a lively manner, with such a note of expectancy in his voice, that I concluded he had been thinking a great deal about elderberries, and was anxious to have another go at them. Accordingly, I cut him another bunch, which he quickly consumed, making little exclamations the while—“Thank you, thank you, very good, very good indeed!” It was a new sensation in his life, and made him very happy, and was almost as good as a day of liberty in the fields and meadows and on the open green downs.
From that time on I visited him two or three times a day to give him huge clusters of elderberries. There were plenty for the starlings as well; the clusters on those trees would have filled a cart.
Then one morning I heard an indignant scream from the garden, and peeping out saw my friend, the pig, bound hand and foot, being lifted by a dealer into his cart with the assistance of the farmer. 3
It made Hudson happy to feel he could bring cheer to the last days of this sociable and sensitive animal, destined though he was for the butcher. Of course, it is not to be expected that the average person should be quite as sensitive in translating the grunts and growls as a trained naturalist. Nevertheless, I want to stress the good-naturedness of pigs because we have done them such a terrible injustice in the way we think of them, even to using their name as a vile insult.
But why have we given such a bad name to an animal who is full of intelligence and honest-hearted zest for life; why have we so demeaned a creature capable of endearing and lasting friendships with human beings? It would perhaps be easier to understand if we did this to the crocodile, for example, who historically has been a real threat to our lives and seems to have something about him of the darkness. But the pig? The loyal, friendly, likable pig?
Part of the answer, at least, is rather simple. The pig is guilty of having flesh that human beings find tasty.
Man has an infinite capacity to rationalize his rapacity, especially when it comes to something he wants to eat.
—CLEVELAND AMORY
Since few of us have any direct experience with pigs anymore, we can think and speak of them as foul and unwholesome beasts without being disturbed by the facts of the matter. But down through the ages, people who have kept pigs have sensed their undeniable intelligence and friendliness. Only by looking the other way could human beings manage to justify what they have done in order to have bacon and ham, just as black humans were dehumanized in the minds of whites in order to justify their oppression and slavery.
Schweitzer’s Pig
When Albert Schweitzer was in Africa running a volunteer hospital, he had a standing offer out to the natives that if they brought him an animal that they would otherwise have killed, he’d pay them for it. In such manner did he save numerous animal lives, create an entourage of assorted critters around him, and show the natives new possibilities of interacting with the local animals. He wrote a remarkable account of meeting a pig.
One day a Negro woman brought me a tame wild boar about two months old. “It is called Josephine, and it will follow you around like a dog,” she said. We agreed upon five francs as the price. My wife was just then away for a few days. With the help of Joseph and n’Kendju, my hospital assistants, I immediately drove some stakes into the ground and made a pen, with the wire netting rather deep in the earth. Both of my black helpers smiled.
“A wild boar will not remain in the pen; it digs his way out from under it,” said Joseph. “Well, I should like to see this little wild boar get under this wire netting sunk deep in the earth,” I answered. “You will see,” said Joseph.
The next morning the animal had already gotten out. I felt almost relieved about it, for I had promised my wife that I would make no new acquisition to our zoo without her consent, and I had a foreboding that a wild boar would not, perhaps, be to her liking.
When I came up from the hospital for the midday meal, however, there was Josephine waiting for me in front of the house, and looking at me as if she wanted to say: “I will remain ever so faithful to you, but you must not repeat the trick with the pen.” And so it was.
When my wife arrived she shrugged her shoulders. She never enjoyed Josephine’s confidence and never sought it. Josephine had a very delicate sensibility about such things. In time, when she had come to understand that she was not permitted to go up on the veranda, things became bearable. On a Saturday some weeks later, however, Josephine disappeared. In the evening the missionary met me in front of my house and shared my sorrow, since Josephine had also shown some attachment to him.
“I feel sure she has met her end in some Negro’s pot,” he said.
“It was inevitable.”
With the blacks a wild boar, even when tamed, does not fall within the category of a domestic animal but remains a wild animal that belongs to him who kills it. While he was still speaking, however, Josephine appeared, behind her a Negro with a gun.
“I was standing,” he said, “in the clearing, where the ruins of the former American missionary’s house are still to be seen, when I saw this wild boar. I was just taking aim, but it came running up to me and rubbed against my legs! An extraordinary wild boar! But imagine what it did then. It trotted away with me after it, and now here we are. So it’s your wild boar? How fortunate that this did not happen to a hunter who is not so quick-witted as I.”
I understood his hint, complimented him generously, and gave him a nice present.4
Later, writing of the same boar, Schweitzer spoke of her coming to church and causing an uproar by behaving like a wild pig, but then gradually learning to “behave more properly in church.” Struck again and again by the spirit of this animal, Schweitzer wrote:
How shall I sufficiently praise your wisdom, Josephine! To avoid being bothered by gnats at night, you adopted the custom of wandering into the boys’ dormitory, and of lying down there under the first good mosquito net. How many times because of this have I had to compensate, with tobacco leaves, those upon whom you forced yourself as a sleeping companion. And when the sand fleas had so grown in your feet that you could no longer walk, you hobbled down to the hospital, let yourself be turned over on your back, endured the knife that the tormentors stuck into your feet, put up with the burning of the tincture of iodine, with which the wounds were daubed, and grunted your sincere thanks when the matter was once and for all done with.5
The Fragrance of the Farm
Since I have found that pigs are such endearing and friendly chaps, I don’t look at pork chops the way I once did. And there’s something else I’ve learned that has forever changed the way I feel about such things as bacon and ham.
What I have learned is that the pork farmers have by and large followed the lead of the poultry industry in recent years. Instead of pig farms, today we have more and more pig factories.
The result is not a happy one for today’s pigs.
Some of today’s pig factories