Pigs

I don't know if you are already aware of this...but pigs are really cool animals. "Science" has decided that pigs are pretty dang smart; ranking third in intelligence after primates and dolphins. Of course, people eat primates and dolphins, too.

I have never made very much headway trying to persuade people that they shouldn't eat pigs "just because" they're intelligent, sweet and interesting. After all, all animals have their strong points and it doesn't save them from being eaten, by humans or by any other animal.

I even have one colleague who has a very specific reason to eat pigs: she claims that while visiting a farm in England, she saw a group of farm pigs attacking and harassing a solitary, smaller pig. They were being kept in a small, miserably unclean enclosure. She claims that seeing these pigs behave so violently toward one another convinced her that pigs were fit only for food.

When I pointed out that by this logic, she should eat humans, since we're violent toward other humans all the time, she said it was different because people are intelligent. I told her that pigs' intelligence was comparable to that of a three-year old child, and she went back to the first argument, that they're violent and filthy.

Pigs don't choose to be filthy. Left to their own devices, they are actually meet human-like standards for sanitation, but since we force them to live in filthy conditions, they are filthy. Isn't this starting to seem like a circular argument? A pig is naturally intelligent and clean. We don't like to think that we eat intelligent and clean animals, so we force them to live in conditions so vile, they go mad with boredom and misery. We also make them live in filth. There. Now, pigs are fit to be eaten. It's a crazed, violent, filthy animal. We're morally justified if we choose to eat them.

I have just been visiting Pigs Peace Sanctuary on the web, and I cannot recommend it strongly enough if you're interested in pigs. What an amazing labor of love. Judy, the founder/director, also discusses many pigs' personalities, their incredible learning curve, and their sweetness toward people and each other. Here's a link: http://pigspeace.org/main/index.html

Believe me, I know I am bashing my head into a brick wall here. "I would be vegetarian except I can't live without bacon" is one of the most common excuses for perpetuating factory farming any vegan hears, second only to "I would go vegan except I can't give up cheese". The Secret Society of Vegans needs to appoint a drug czar to deal with these two omnivore addictions. Poor pigs.

Anyway, here's a link to the top ten reasons not to eat pigs:

http://www.goveg.com/f-top10pigs.asp