Environmental Writing

Happy Pig Day!

By: AmandaREO

(March 1)

Pigs are known to be smart, friendly, and clean animals that enjoy playing and exploring. They don't have good eyesight but a great sense of smell, and are one of the smartest animals out there. They're sociable and exhibit emotions and feelings that show us they're not just a source of food. So why do we see dogs differently than pigs, when they are both intelligent, loving, playful, and social animals? What's the cutoff for the animals that are deemed pet worthy and deserving of loving homes and gentle care? Is just the taste of an animal enough to justify the literal hell that pigs go through in humans' hearts?

Pigs are treated as if they are only on the Earth for our benefit. They are abused with terrible living conditions, living in tiny pens and constant fear and torture. Their babies taken away from them when they're only 10 days old, and mother pigs are impregnated over and over again (while giving birth to 8-12 piglets at a time!). They're not given the resources they need like space and healthy food. Pigs are fed to be incredibly big which is unhealthy for them and can give them disease and discomfort. The torture continues their entire life until their killed in too horrible to talk about ways.

Pigs are the second most killed animal for food, with nearly 1.5 billion killed globally in 2016. Just this year, 2021, 123,686,000 pigs have been killed in the U.S. so far. Every year, 129 million pigs are killed for food in the U.S.-and the U.S. doesn't even have the biggest pork industry. Since 1978, the amount of pigs on industrial farms in 2007 has become twenty times bigger. The huge demand for pigs is to blame for the amount that are killed, with the average meat eating American eating 31 pigs in their lifetime. 98.3 % of pigs in the U.S. live in in factory farms, which are incredibly inhumane and unsustainable.

Even if you're an avid meat lover, you can still care about pigs' livelihood. When you eat, make sure that your meat is from a humane and sustainable farm. Most meat in grocery stores are humane, but to make sure that there are labels on it that say Certified Humane, Locally Raised on Pasture-Based Farms, Certified Organic, etc. If you don't see any, read about the farm that the meat is from-well, do that regardless of labels. If you eat at a restaurant, ask about where the meat is from and if they invest in humane meat-it's your right to know. If you're able to, eat less pork. Do a meatless Monday, or just cut down on meat in general. Remember, we are the ones that dictate factory farm and slaughterhouses' future. We have the power to shut them down, just by reading labels and doing some research.

It's awful that most of what we talked about on this was about the industry and suffering that pigs endure, when they're such complex and sensitive animals. If you'd like to read more about the meat industry and it's environmental affect and humaneness, which you totally should, we have an article on that in the section titled "9/28/20 Issue of the Week-The Meat Industry". But right now, I'd like to end on this:

Happy pig day, everyone-now, let's make it happy for pigs.

(Poster by c-chezqueen)