Food...

The blog post about Pigs As Pesticides has gotten quite a response. So, in the spirit of Porky, Babe, Wilbur, here’s more news in the world of pigs.

Handel’s Hog Heaven

Pigs, it seems, are not below a dose of culture. Nguyen Chi Cong plays classical symphonies and sonatas on his pig farm every morning and afternoon, first for the workers, now for the 3,000 pigs. Cong has raised pigs outside of Ho Chi Min city in Vietnam for 22 years and is convinced that the music soothes the pigs, which means they eat more and gain weight faster. “I think I am the first farmer in Vietnam to apply this technique,” he told PigProgress.net an international pig farming organization. Considering that we’re using growth hormone to get cows to do the same thing—namely fatten up—perhaps pig farmers (and dairy farmers for that matter) should take note.

 Pretend Pork

In the future we may not be eating pork, ham, pig, at all. New York Times recently reported that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has put up $1 million for the person who can figure out how to make “commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.” The scariest part of this challenge isn’t what might come out of those test tubes and Petri dishes but the fact that, according to New Harvest, a non-profit “dedicated to advancing meat substitutes,” said “because meat substitutes are produced under controlled conditions impossible to maintain in traditional animal farms, they can be safer, more nutritious, less polluting and more humane than conventional meat.”

Hold on—test tube pork chops are healthier than those that were raised on a farm? Maybe we’re addressing the wrong problem here. I know this is from PETA and an advocacy organization, but when someone can reasonably say that scientifically produced meat is healthier than farm raised because of pollution and farming practices, it seems like it might be a bit easier to change how we do our farming (let the pigs root in the mud instead of keeping them stuck in tight pens, use environmentally friendly waste management, etc) than running to science.

Image from the News section of PigProgress.net