April 6, 2009
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Betrayal & Resurrection of Piggy Kind
Have you seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt,
And for all the little piggies, life is getting worse. George Harrison
In 1969, members of “The Manson Family” broke into a Beverley Hills mansion and murdered five people including the pregnant actress Sharon Tate. The killers stabbed their victims with knives and forks and then wrote the words “Pig” and “Piggy” on the walls with Tate’s blood, just as their leader Charles Manson believed the Beatle’s song “Piggies” instructed. While that brutal misinterpretation shocked America and sent songwriter George Harrison into a depression, it was not without precedent. The destinies of human and piggy kind have intermingled for several thousand years with consequences both beneficial and tragic.
Contrary by nature, pigs were the hardest of all livestock to domesticate – taking 2000 years longer than sheep. They were worth the wait. Since they don’t digest straw, grass or leaves, pigs never threatened crops like sheep and cows did. Because pigs enjoy the same foods as humans, they were practical once civilization began producing agriculture surpluses.
Human and piggy kind share much more than diet. During the famines of the Middle Ages, highwaymen infamously butchered travelers and sold their meat as “pork,” which is also what cannibal societies through the centuries said it most resembled. 19th Amazon natives called human meat “two legged pig,” which is also what 20th century feminists said it most resembled, though only the male species. Of all animals, pig’s milk is most like human’s milk, but we never drink it because it’s all needed by piglets, who are harder to wean than any other animal – except humans. Human and pig skin share so many genetic characteristics they are interchangeable in lab tests, explaining why human babies are more comforted by footballs than by other balls. Because of the similarities, surgeons have historically honed their skills on pigs and the most successful experiments with injecting human genes into animal sperm have been done on pig sperm. Which is good news because pigs are the best cloning candidates to grow organs that can be transplanted into humans without rejection.
Until recently, efforts to separate human and piggy kind have been futile. In the 12th century, a Parisian pig tripped a horse, fracturing the skull of the king‘s son. A royal edict then forbid the raising of pigs in the city, but no one heeded this law for over 400 hundred years. Bacon trumped fear of a king’s wrath elsewhere too. Trying to control the pollution in 14th century London, King Edward forbid slaughterhouses in the city. His edicts were ignored. Germans were more practical – pig sties were forbidden in Frankfurt front yards in the 15th century, but not in backyards because pigs performed a vital function cleaning up human garbage. That’s why they were still a familiar sight in New York City streets through the Civil War.
Piggy kind thrived in America. Like pioneers, pigs were impervious to the hostile frontier. They even loved the hot humid climate of the South where their numbers grew so fast they became a common commodity for the first time, as humans took note. In 1720, William Byrd wrote that Virginians ate so much bacon and ham they became hoggish themselves, “prone to grunt rather than speak.”
In Iowa, pigs became the perfect complement to sustainable farming. Our fertile soil produced surplus grains, enough to sell and to feed to pigs, who then grew so fast they could be eaten and sold while still growing the herd. Railroads brought immigrants into Iowa and took hogs out. Carl Sandburg didn’t call Chicago “butcher of the nation’s hogs” for nothing. By the time pigs became literary stars — symbolic of both the best and worst of humankind in “Lord of the Flies” and “Animal Farm” — they were virtual barnyard dogs, man’s best (edible) friend. They kept his place clean, chased off predators and gave their all of flesh, blood and bone that he might live. O holy pig.
Then, in the last three decades, mankind betrayed his best friend – locking him up in confinements of filth and cruelty that would surely nauseate our farmer forefathers. Dispossessed of dear reason, pigs cursed us back with pollution, bacterial horrors and the sad recognition that we are no longer good stewards of our common DNA. Today a typical confinement hog produces six gallons of waste daily and a large hog confinement crams 100,000 pigs together — so tightly that they eat the tails off the pigs in front of them. Do the math and you have so much neurotic crap that it’s small wonder confinements begat brand new microbes deadly enough to kill a million a fish at once.
My grandfather, a good steward and Iowa pig farmer, liked to say “20th century, hell. I could pick a better century out of a hat blindfolded.” I think he’d get a kick out the 21st century.
Heritage pigs are coming back and next Sunday, April 19 five of them will be the stars of Cochon555, a judged feast that five top Iowa chefs will prepare at Sticks (3631 SW 61st Street, Des Moines), for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: Iowa Chapter in honor of Will Krueger. Matt Steigerwald (Lincoln Cafe) , a transplanted Carolinian who worships pig meat, Tag Grandgeorge (Le Jardin), a charcuterie master, Bill Overdyck (Centro), who makes rillettes to die-for, Andrew Meek (Sage, soon to be at Sbrocco), a two time James Beard semifinalist and Jamie Monaghan (Embassy Club) will each use a whole hog and feed the audience.
