WHEN PIGS FLY
PHOTO: ROGER BALLEN
The phrase "When Pigs Fly" is an adynaton - a figure of speech so hyperbolic that it describes an impossibility. The implication of such a phrase is that the circumstances in question (the adynaton, and the circumstances to which the adynaton are being applied) will never occur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_pig
♥ Girl is Jewish, and the fact that she hooked up with this boykie from an Afrikaans background is one of life’s mysteries and an example of how things will happen as they should. We’ve been together for a loooong time and I’ve said it before - she’s my love, my attraction, my companion, my sounding-board, my distraction, irritation, and many other things - above all she’s my friend.
But this post is not about her, but about pigs. Pigs in the Holy Land.
♥ Girl’s sister lives in Israel, a couple of days ago she mentioned that her brother-in-law run over a pig on his way to Ben Gurion airport in the middle of the night and was nearly late for his flight to Italy.
“Ag shame” I answered in true South African style, and then did a double-take. I’ve heard of and seen of a lot of road kill, cows, chickens, horses, mice, dogs, cats, possums and I even wrote a blog post once about the venerable Arthur Boyt way back when who actually eats road kill: http://mrbaggins1.livejournal.com/7474.html
But I’ve never heard about a pig been run over -not once. Sus scrofa domestica, to the best of my knowledge rather laze, around in mud than going for strolls on busy motorways. Then I had another epiphany - Hey Girl, we are talking about the Holy Land where Kosher is King. This can’t be possible.
It later transpired that it was a wild boar that met an untimely end on the motorway. I also found out that there are actually a lot of pigs in Israel. The four legged kind, not those that blow themselves to bits in search of those 72 heavenly virgins. Damn truth is that it’s better to visit the local strip joint where you can pay a couple of bucks for a pro who knows what she’s doing comparing to the lack of sexual prowess of a half a dozen virgins.
Anyway, back to scrofa domestica & Israel. The raising of pigs and the consumption of pork has been banned in Israel since 1963, apart from in a small, traditionally Arab-Christian area in the north of the country. Eating pork is forbidden under both Jewish and Islamic law. In spite of that, more than 170,000 pigs are killed annually in Israel to meet demand. Most are supposed to be raised on farms in Arab-owned land, since pigs cannot legally be raised in Israel. Pigs are not supposed to be raised on holy soil, and the soil of Israel is holy.
Pig farmers, however, found a convenient loophole - pigs are raised on wooden platforms, elevated a few feet above the ground. That way no law is broken.
Kibbutz Lahav, in the northern Negev, is the largest producer of pigs in Israel and the main supplier to the slaughterhouse and processing plant at Kibbutz Mizra, in the Galil. Kibbutz Mizra operates the most advanced slaughterhouse in the Middle East, and it is producing 150 tons of pork products monthly.
Kibbutz Lahav pig rearing enterprise is controversial. The kibbutz maintains that the primary purpose of its herd is for medical research, which makes the operation legal. However, it also has a factory. Animals that have been used in research cannot be used for food, but excess pigs, and those raised to provide organs for research, are processed to be sold for human consumption.
The demand for what is sometimes euphemistically dubbed “white meat” has grown steadily in Israel. This is partly due to the influx of secular Jews from the former Soviet Union. Pork imports into the country are banned, thus the meat on sale is domestically produced - with the research facility at Kibbutz Lahav providing approximately ten percent of total production.
Go figure - It’s fascinating.
I’m a carnivore but live in total denial of the origin of the succulent cuts and roasts appearing on my plate. I prefer to believe that it’s manufactured in some magical facility where proteins are turned into delicacies by science and alchemy. Nothing gets hurt, nothing is killed. I love a rare steak and pork chops are the best of all, especially braaied (barbecued) and served with pap.
Trawling the internet about pig farming in the Holy Land I stumbled on something so disturbing that I am seriously thinking about turning vegetarian, or certainly laying off eating pork as a start.
According to research pigs are more intelligent than the average three year old human.
Professor Donald Broom at the Cambridge University Veterinary School found that they have quite sophisticated cognitive ability, even more so than dogs and certainly three-year-olds.
Stanley Curtis, a Penn State University researcher introduced two pigs, Hamlet and Omelet, (oh shit) to video games in the 1990’s. In one of the experiments these pigs were trained to move a cursor on a video screen with their snouts. When the pigs used the cursors again, they were able to distinguish between the scribbles they already knew, and the scribbles they were seeing for the first time.
"They beg to play video games. They beg to be the first ones out of their pens, and then they trot up the ramp to play," Professor Curtis said. “They can hold an icon in their mind, and remember it at a later date. Pigs are able to focus with an intensity I have never seen in a chimp.”
Other tests were done where the pigs were taught the meaning of simple words and phrases. Several years later, the instructions were repeated, and the pigs still remembered what to do. The same thing was done with different objects placed in front of them. They were taught to jump over, sit by, or retrieve the item. Three years later, they could distinguish between the items.
I’ll rather bludgeon a three year old human tantrum-throwing-video-playing-brat to death than eat bacon again. I am sorry, it’s just ain’t right.
These three remain. Chicken, beef and lamb. All free range. What’s next to go?