For the week of February 12-18, 2003

Picture a pig

Commentary by BETTY BELL

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I haven’t seen a pig for years, maybe because they’re called "units" now, and they’re born and raised on factory farms, not in barnyards.

By changing pigs into units, it became emotionally possible to cram them into windowless structures in small metal cages on bare cement floors where never once are they able to satisfy their basic urge and need to root.

Twenty-five years or so ago, I read "Death of a Pig" in a collection of E. B. White’s essays, and his pig stuck fast to my memory board. I wasn’t keen to read about its demise, but Mr. White was a writer not easily put aside. Presently I’m reading a book, "Dominion, The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy" by Matthew Scully, a book hard to read because of the savagery he documents. What follows here, in their words, is a comparison of Mr. White’s pig that lived in pig heaven, and Mr. Sculley’s pigs that existed, and do exist, in hell. Hang on.

Mr. White: "My pigpen is at the bottom of an old orchard below the house. The pigs I have raised have lived in a faded building that once was an icehouse. There is a pleasant yard to move about in, shaded by an apple tree that overhangs the low rail fence … The sawdust in the icehouse makes a comfortable bottom in which to root, and a warm bed."

Mr. Scully: "A bedlam of squealing and chain rattling and guttural, roaring sounds I didn’t know pigs could make greets us as Gay throws open the door. They are locked, about six hundred of them, not only in the barn but each between bars fitted to size. "Confinement" doesn’t describe their situation. They are encased, pinned down, unable to do anything but sit and suffer and scream at the sight of the gods. ‘They’re scared,’ Gay informs me."

Mr. White: "It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when I first noticed that there was something wrong with the pig. He failed to appear at the trough for his supper, and when a pig (or a child) refuses supper a chill wave of fear runs through any household."

Mr. Scully: "A pig displaying signs of illness is taken out, dispatched by one of the associates with a captive-bolt gun or other means, and trucked either to the dead hole or a rendering plant."

Mr. White: "The treatment I had been giving the pig for two days was then repeated, somewhat more expertly, by the doctor, Miss Owen and I handing him things as he needed them--the pig unprotesting, the house shadowy, protecting, intimate. I went to bed tired but with a feeling of relief that I had turned over part of the responsibility of the case to a licensed doctor. I was beginning to think, though, that the pig was not going to live."

Mr. Scully: "Gay trundles ahead, cheerfully unaware, apparently, of the profound betrayal of veterinary ethics everywhere around us--the sworn obligation of every veterinarian "to protect animal health (and) relieve animals suffering … They’re piglet machines. And tumors, fractured bones, festering sores, whatever, none of these receive serious medical attention anymore."

Mr. White: "The pig’s lot and mine were inextricably bound now … From then until the time of his death I held the pig steadily in the bowl of my mind; the task of trying to deliver him from his misery became a strong obsession."

Mr. Scully: "What happened to this one? I ask, pointing to NPD 50-375, whose legs are swollen and body covered with open sores. Probably a crate injury, says Gay, without breaking stride. Following her further down I realize how silly the question must have seemed. They are all covered with sores. They all have crate injuries--they try to put their legs through the bars into a neighboring crate … their legs get crushed and broken. About half of those pigs whose legs can be seen appear to have sprained or fractured limbs, never examined by a vet, never splinted, never even noticed anymore."

Mr. White: "At intervals during the last day I took cool fresh water down to him and at such times as he found the strength to get to his feet he would stand with head in the pail and snuffle his snout around. He drank a few sips but no more; yet it seemed to comfort him to dip his snout in water and bobble it about, sucking on and blowing out through his teeth."

Mr. Scully: "There is no sick ward here. For most, it’s either Kopertox (an ointment that carries the warning "Do not use on animals which are used for food production.) or the cull pen. Nothing in between, no care anymore for animals as such, no regard for their suffering or for the most minimal duties of ordinary decency."

Mr. White: "He died twenty-four hours later, or it might have been forty eight--there is a blur in time here, and I may have lost or picked up a day in the telling and the pig one in the dying.-- The news of the death of my pig traveled fast and far, and I received many expressions of sympathy from friends and neighbors, for no one took the event lightly and the premature expiration of a pig is, I soon discovered, a departure which the community marks solemnly on its calendar, a sorrow in which it feels fully involved."

Mr. Scully: "Pigs and lambs and cows and chickens are not pieces of machinery, no matter how cost-efficient it may be to treat them as such. Machinery doesn’t cry or feel frightened or lonely. And when a man treats them this way, he might as well be a machine himself. Something dies in him, too. Something is lost in a society that rewards and enriches him, driving him on at this pace and in this spirit."

And so, fellow sojourner, why have I brought you to this place? Because, with your power of one, there is something powerful that you can do. Insist that your meat department offer pork from pigs that lived as pigs, not from units that lived with never a trace of human decency. Buy no pork until this pork is available. Have faith: The power of one multiplied is a force. Be a part of that force.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.