MY FIRST TRIP TO A PIG FARM

Beak trimming, crowded conditions, tail cutting, teeth grinding, over feeding, cannibalism, disease, suffering, forced breeding have all been documented in farming operations that raise food animals.  The internet has brought home these practices to us on You Tube and other media sights.  Best practices at each style of farming operation have become necessary to produce food animals for the worlds’ population.  You may not like it, but it is what we do as the dominant species.

My first real understanding of farming operations involving animals was a visit to a large privately held pig farm in Texas.  This was not a state of the art facility, but a farm that one could smell on a clear day for miles.  Its stench, I would soon find out, was the resulting combination of dirt, water, pig excrement, and rotting pig carcasses.

 Imagine an arena surrounded by low roof metal structures with what looked like pipe pens under each structure.  The arena was a muddy mess the size of half a football field.  Through it walked the largest pig I had every seen.  It walked slowly and purposefully through the muck that sucked at each foot he put down.  I was sure it had somehow been bred with a bull from another species to create such a monster.  He seemed to be walking among other pigs with an air of nobility, and control.  If there were such thing as a pig alpha male, this was it.  Please don’t ask me how I was able to discern it was a male considering I had never sexed pigs before.  Trust me, he was a he.

The owner was a very large man, and yes as a young man myself with a vivid and sometimes irreverent sense of humor I saw the parallel.  My father in law and I were there to purchase a few pigs for my father in law’s entrance into the pig industry.  He wanted to add them to his farm.  He already had cows, and geese.  He felt it was time to add pigs.  At this point all I wanted was some clean air.  I knew we had to do our best not to show disgust by covering our noses, after all farmers support farmers and what we smell as putrid is the smell of money to the farmer.

We walked closer to the pig arena getting close to one of the metal structures that appeared to house mothers and their babies.  The mothers were large and seemed to move only with gargantuan effort.  As a mother lumbered amongst her young, she laid down three quarters of the way slowly until gravity took over and she fell the last 10-12 inches at a rate of descent that one of her young could not calculate.  The baby pig was immediately engulfed under the mass of mama and disappeared from sight.  A muffled squeal was heard for only a moment as if someone had stepped on a squeeze toy and expelled all  the air.  The mother adjusted herself but appeared to be oblivious to the squishing of her young and found a bit of discomfort  with the small bump she appeared to lay on.  The other piglets had quickly found refuge under a 4” steel pipe that appeared to have been placed strategically for just an event like the one I had just witnessed.  Once mother had stopped moving the piglets ran back out from under the pipe to take their places at the table of mama teets.  Squealing, snorting, sucking, followed by the low guttural moans of eating satisfaction could be heard.

The owner cursed a bit knowing that he had lost a bit of profit under the mother.  Looking more closely I noticed a 55 gallon metal drum placed just outside of each pen.  As my father in law negotiated for his new financial venture, I walked closer to the barrel.  Flies seemed to be swarming just above the opening of the barrel.  They paid no attention to me, but were only interested in the inside of the barrel.  An odor that seemed to rise from the barrel and overtake the general smell was that of rotting flesh.  These barrels, one could only surmise all contained the same cargo, were surrounding the arena and served as rancid incense to the olfactory experience around us.   When I looked over the edge I saw that the barrel was ¾ full with rotting pink baby pigs.  Apparently the owner lost a lot of the piglets to careless maternal instincts and slow piglets.

At the conclusion of my father in laws business with the large pig operator, we got back in the truck and with the windows down for the 30 mile drive home to cleanse odors from our clothing and nostrils, we talked about what we saw.  After everything we saw that day, I decided one thing.  Some of you may think I decided never to eat pig products again.  You would be wrong.  I simply decided never to become a pig farmer.