Pigs, the Jews, and Christmas.

For thousands of years swine flesh has been relished in many countries, however pigs are viewed with outright disgust by both Jewish and the Muslim community in general and were classed as an unclean food under dietry restrictions contained in the Bible, this command to abstain from pig flesh stretches back some 5000 years.  The defiling nature of pigs is was seen in an event which occured around 165 years before Christ, the Hellenistic King Antiochus IV Epiphanes led his army to conquer Jerusalem and in celebration of the victory he sacrificed a pig there to the Hellenistic god Zeus, in doing so he had defiled the altar of the temple dedicated to the Jewish God Yahweh.  After recapturing the temple, the Jews inaugurated a celebration which was to be observed annually to remember the defilement of their place of worship by the pig being sacrificed there.  The celebration was known by the name ( Hanukkah: Festival of light ) which roughly corresponds to the date of Christmas, it also incorporates some very similar features to the Christian festive season such as: presents. gift giving, candles, and feasting.

C  Wild Pigs - Wild Boar

In the past Wild Boar were hunted brutally to their extinction in the Britain by people who often not only shot them, but who at other times used very fast and powerful dogs like the Great Dane to hunt them, it is legendary how the Wild Boar with their great courage fought back, however they stood little chance against such formidable dogs which were especially bred on the continent for bringing these powerful creatures down.

Image below:  Sow rooting about in soil, and expressing natural insticts.  To this day wild boar continue to nurse a hatred for their old arch enemy, “Fido“, so if you are walking in the woods with a dog on a lead in an area where there are known to be wild boar, never ever get between your dog and the Boar, their ferocity is warranted due to the merciless hunting of their ancestors. The ingenuity of the reintroduced and much maligned boar has enabled some of them to escape recently from their compounds and these are now breeding successfully in feral communities in several counties across Britain.

Image right: Freyr

The reappearance of wild boar is not without resentment by unenlightened humans, as sometimes those who live locally complain that boar trot into their gardens and root up the lawn and plants, however with such creatures known to be living in woods locally the householders should have installed adequate fencing, we also seem to conveniently forget, that this was their land before ours, and that the boar deserve to take their rightful place in the British countryside as part of the overall biodiversity. Under these wild and natural conditions that the escaped wild boar, and some formerly domestic pigs now enjoy, they are now able to express their natural social instincts which are so vital to their mental well-being and which have for so long been wrongly denied them?

Modern Breeds.

The colouring of the different species is quite diverse, they range from jet black through to the highly favoured pure white, also ginger, black and white spotted .

Many breeds have been bred by humans to suite particular aspects of the consumers needs and they come in a wide variety of kinds and colour variations, such as Landrace, Large White, Gloucester Old Spot, Berkshire, Tamworth and Hampshire.

For today’s modern farming requirements, hybrids of the major breeds have been specifically bred to satisfy demand for the ideal pig; this hybrid used to fill the human stomach will usually possess a set of desired characteristics, although they are viewed as falling into three main types:

Those can be in some cases types that convert minimum feed into maximum flesh and fat, and finish with an average carcass weight of 220lbs. Bacon production breeds are slaughtered to achieve an optimum carcass weight of about 150 lbs. Then there are the little porkers slaughtered to achieve a carcass weight of around 100 lbs.

It is not in the farmer’s financial interest to allow pigs to live long, yet have the potential to live 25 years or more.

C   Maternal Instinct.

There is surely much left to learn about these wise and incredibly social creatures, but we are on our way, yet for the greater part we are still woefully ignorant about the private life of pigs. Pioneering research into the social interaction of these intelligent creatures has been long awaited, recently however ongoing research funding has been forthcoming and has resulted in startling revelations. Pigs though often called dirty never deficate in their living area, and in the wild they even make a little nest of herbage in which to give birth.

Pigs are wonderful caring mothers and dote attentively on their offspring, "if given the chance that is", though such inventions as farrowing crates took away the intimate relationship and close contact that the sow and piglets once enjoyed, thankfully these crates have now been banned in some countries. The gestation period for pigs is around 114 days and this has been a very lucrative reason why they are kept, as farmers are always quick to exploit fast turn-over. Interestingly pigs are also not without language, it is now understood that a nursing Sow will speak consolingly in an undertone to her newborn piglets, yet to many of us in our ignorance it is but an unintelligible sound of gentle grunting,  this is not merely for encouragement or to display disapproval or convey emotion, but they even sing to their little ones on occasion!.  The most financially lucrative method of pig production used by the majority of farmers today is to rear pigs in intensive conditions in buildings. Each building may house many hundreds or even thousands of animals, such places are soul destroying for such intelligent sentient creatures and breed frustration and boredom which sometimes manifests itself in mental disorders like tail biting and other mutilation. Until recently farmers routinely docked the tails of pigs to stop this, thankfully this procedure has been banned except under extreme circumstances. It is however widely believed that the act of tail docking is still carried on routinely by some high density rearers. Where the animal’s welfare is given more consideration and pigs are reared in fields and woods, tail and other mutilation which formerly occurred due to boredom and stress are virtually eliminated. Under the overcrowded and cramped conditions evident in today’s pig rearing culture they are liable to succumb to infection by bacterial and viral diseases, which must be controlled by injections.

Slaughter.

Pig killing has always been an ugly, violent, and bloody business. Things now have moved a little from the days when if you desired bacon in your diet you would have to manhandle them onto a pig killing bench and slit their throats (pig sticking). Being intelligent, pigs understand exactly what is going on in a slaughterhouse, and some compare it to the same feelings that the Jews experienced as they understood the sound of terror from the voices of their own people when they were being gassed in the death chambers under the cruel Nazi regime, and just as those people became increasingly distressed and troubled when facing death, so does the intelligent pig. The majority of pigs slaughtered in the UK are first stunned with electric probes which are put each side of their head. Their throat is then slit, after which they are skinned and dismembered, what a sad undignified end this is for the millions of highly intelligent creatures we demean and call farm pigs.

                                            Image right: A government inspection of pigs carcases.

 Pets.

Pigs are quite fashionable as pets these days due to their trusting but "foolhardy"attitude toward humans.  There are many good people who try to give the pigs the best natural life possible, this is very commendable, and though we may rescue a pig from a bad environment the best way to show love of nature in this respect is to help support the work of organisations such as ourselves who help to educate the masses to end the captive breeding of pigs, and secure the reestablishment of wild populations in suitable areas.