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Our
Hidden Shame
The
slaughter of feral pigs, the noblest of all
non-primate creatures, continues
unabated. It's time that Virginians end this
barbarity!
It
has come to my attention that devilish deeds are
afoot in Florida
where, according to a Cox News Service article in
the Oct. 18 issue of the Richmond Times-Dispatch,
voters will be asked next month to decide whether
expectant pigs deserve constitutional protection. My
interest in bringing this matter to the attention of
Virginians is not to confer members of the animal
kingdom with rights which are properly due
humans. As worthy a species as pigs are – and who
could deny that pigs are the noblest and most
intelligent of beasts? -- where does one draw the
line? Dogs? Cats? Raccoons? Chipmunks? Reptiles?
Jellyfish?
Rather,
my goal is to simply decry the unnecessarily cruel
treatment of porkers throughout the land. In
Florida, farmers happen to confine pregnant mommy
pigs in small, squalid “gestation crates.”
Sadly, the porcine species suffers abominations even
more horrid in other parts of the country.
Virginians are deluding themselves if they think
their tranquil commonwealth is any exception!
The
Florida
referendum would insert the following language into
the state constitution: “No person shall confine a
pig during pregnancy in a cage, crate or other
enclosure, or tether a pregnant pig on a farm so
that the pig is prevented from turning around
freely.”
Egregious
as is this barbaric form of imprisonment, it pales
beside the genocidal savagery of so-called
“hunters” who, armed with 21st-century weaponry,
track down and kill feral pigs that have managed to
escape their farm-yard bondage and live in the wild,
as well as their Western cousins, the wild peccary
or javalina. So anaesthetized is our society to
these crimes against animality that people post
boastful photographs of their deeds on the Internet.
But
those people live in Texas,
you say. What else do you expect? Virginians are not
like them. We
are civilized.
How
wrong you are! I have heard many a tale of hog
hunting in the mountains of Virginia
– and even along the Atlantic
Coast.
I have personally talked to wildlife managers in one
of our state parks who assert that because pigs are
not an “indigenous species,” they do not deserve
the protections extended to other creatures. Indeed,
on the pretext that feral pigs root around and
destroy sensitive marsh fauna, the Commonwealth
of
Virginia
-- our very own state government -- sanctions the
“culling” of pigs through hunting.
The
very idea is chilling – as if pigs ranked lower on
the evolutionary scale of intelligence and
sensibility than plants!
Of course, the same deadly logic is not applied to
horses, which cause even more rampant ecological
destruction. When the number of horses, another
non-indigenous species, gets out of control, they
are rounded up and sold in auctions – not
exterminated like vermin. An indifferent public
might countenance the slaughter of pigs, but imagine
the uproar if hunters took out Misty of
Chincoteague!
Where
is the outrage? Where is the shame? Where is the
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a Norfolk,
Va.-based
organization? Go to PETA’s home page and you’ll
see fawning over baby elephants in Thailand,
bull fighting in Colombia
and wild deer in Pennsylvania
– but nothing about the wild pigs in PETA’s back
yard! (The website does carry a page decrying the
treatment of pigs on farms. PETA advocates raising
free-range hogs. But a search on their website
yields nothing for feral pigs or javalina. Nada!)
It
is time that Virginians, like Floridians, face their
hidden shame. It’s time that we confer upon pigs
the same treatment we would give cats, dogs, horses
and other higher-order mammals! It’s time,
paraphrasing the words of the late Bob Marley, to
stand up, stand up, stand up for pigs rights!
--
October 21, 2002
* A rasher, for the uninitiated,
is a thin slice of fried bacon.
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