 |
| The terrible three with their tails |
Well anyway back to the title. Do pigs get moody? I can categorically tell you they do. Lady Lavinia is in one hell of a mood ever since. She's narking at her rapidly growing piglets. She's narking at Laertes. She is even moaning to me. Maybe I should give her seaweed?
I have been following Ireland's Farmers Twitter account since it first started. In fact I was one of the first tweeting farmers. Don't laugh. I told them I wasn't a farmer, more a very, very small smallholder but they weren't deterred. So I did my stint. After that it was taken over by different organisers and each week a different farmer did their week, explaining to the great unwashed what they do. Then one "farmer" who is a very, very big butcher did his week and used it to promote his business (not his farm). Just this week another "farmer" took over to tell us how he raises thousands of pigs.
When any of the great unwashed expressed concern at any of the intensive production methods, the reply was "well we feed seaweed!" Gosh, if only all of life's problems could be solved by eating seaweed.
You dock piglet's tails. Well we feed seaweed.
You keep sows in farrowing crates. Well we feed seaweed (and apple juice.)
The pigs can't root. Well we feed seaweed and they play with a dangling football.
The pigs are always inside. Well we feed seaweed and they have skylights.
The sows are moody. Well we feed seaweed.
Incidentally (what I did learn this week) if you keep more than 80 sows together they won't fight as they don't recognise each other and they don't remember which one pissed them off. Have to say if I was stuffed into a maternity ward with 80 other women I probably wouldn't remember either.
While I have to admit that if pigs have to be raised intensively (inhumanly as far as I am concerned) this system is not the worst. In fact it is probably outstanding in a bad lot. The pigs are raised in purpose built housing with natural light on rubber matting and with Radio Kerry to keep them entertained. That would be torture for me but hey, maybe pigs don't mind bland. The fact that normal pigs and piglets spend probably 80% of their day rooting and nosing about is totally irrelevant here.
Well they are fed seaweed and they have a dangly ball to play with and they can listen to Radio Kerry and they don't get sunburn. The boar was barred off from the sows but he could see them and he had a ball game to amuse him and he could listen to Radio Kerry. Wish that could have done it for Laertes who did his very best to murder me as I kept him from his woman with a strand of electric fencing.
The fact remains that they never get to stick their nose in soil, they never get to eat fresh grass, they never get to wallow, they never get to lie in the sun or get sunburned, they never get to leg it into their house when the heavens open, they never get to watch ESB workers climb poles or delivery lorries trundle down a laneway.
They never get to be pigs.
So you get to buy a €1 chop.........
Pay €4 for a chop that will knock the socks off you with taste, juiciness, flavour, moistness and you know the poor bastard that died to give you this experience had a life.
It's your choice.
Signed: A Bitter Woman.
