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Pigs 
Wed Aug 19, 2009 at 21:19:23 PM PDT
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Yesterday, I met a farmer at my booksigning and he told me his sow had piglets. I had only two questions for him: 1. Is your farm nearby? and 2. Can I visit? So today, I visited his farm to see the piglets, camera in tow.
Unfortunately, the piglets were in an area that was too dark to photograph (but oh my, were they adorable!) but I got several other pictures. What a beautiful farm!
This farmer echoed the exact same sentiments of the dairy farmer from the dairy farm I visited the other day: Animals are not machines, and factory farms treat them like machines. If you treat your animals well, they live much longer, healthier lives. This farmer also noted that his pigs are bred for more than just "feed conversion" (the industry term for an animal's ability to convert food into meat as cheaply as possible). He breeds his pigs for length and other physical qualities, as well as for good personalities. He has 6 sows and a boar, and all are incredibly docile. His sows are wonderful mothers... and he doesn't keep them in crates like factory farms!
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Sun Jun 21, 2009 at 08:19:07 AM PDT
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( - promoted by Jill Richardson)
I know when my husband is thinking about a new project by the way he scrutinizes the contents of the barn. Small buckets of parts get set aside. Tools are tossed in discrete piles. At some point comes the announcement: "What would you think about doing some more pigs this summer?"
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Sun Apr 12, 2009 at 17:10:32 PM PDT
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A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a fantastic piece by Nicholas Kristof called "Our Pigs, Our Food, Our Health." Kristof, who grew up on a farm himself, argued FOR limiting antibiotic use in livestock and talked about how factory hog farms often have MRSA (drug resistant bacteria) in both hogs and humans. Well, the factory hog industry has been going NUTS about this. They say that limiting antibiotic use will make pork LESS safe. So they somehow suckered the NYT into publishing an op ed with their (bullshit) side of the issue.
And they can talk, but they can't make smart people believe their BS. On this blog, the Center for a Livable Future exposed that the National Pork Board paid for the study referenced in the recent NYT op ed. But another farmer went even further, debunking the NYT piece line by line in her blog post "Good Science or Political Agenda?."
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