Pigs: "Eat More Bacon"

[Artwork COPYRIGHT 2011 dbkundalini, All Rights Reserved, please don't steal it. Note: Getty Images, please feel free to contact me for usage rights. Limited rights offered to Pork Producers, International.]

I was with a guy at the local barbecued pork restaurant recently. I think it was last Thursday, possibly Tuesday or Wednesday, definitely not Monday, and they're not open on Sunday. And I was busy on Saturday...

Anyway, they have quite a few pigs and other hog-related memorabilia, statues, knickknacks, and portraits there, with the pigs seeming to condone and even encourage the eating of their meat. This struck my friend as being kind of odd.

And, now that I think of it, it also strikes me as being somewhat weird. Maybe they ought to be like the Chik-Fil-Et (sp?) chickens, I guess it is, or maybe cows, that are encouraging possible customers at their restaurant to eat more cow or chickens, whichever is opposite of what they actually serve there. I guess it'd have to be chicken in a place called "Chick-Fill-Et." Like they must serve chicken filets, so there's cows encouraging people to "EAT MOR CHIKN."

That makes more sense if your whole thing is to have people eat the other guy and not you. Or the other species and not you. But it's shortsighted, like in the Martin Niemoller quote, if Niemoller had been a cow: "They came for the chickens and I didn't stop them. Now they're coming for me and there's no chickens to save me." Still, being shortsighted when it comes to your self-preservation can be an effective way to save yourself, because it at least buys time and allows you to plan your next move.

But getting back to pigs, and I'm 100% serious about this, in my opinion it's better to exist than not. If I had never been born at all, imagine how unhappy I'd be. I'd be sitting there going, "What? A stinking chigger can exist, but I can't exist?! How crazy is that!" You'd be unhappy, too! Or step it up, with something better than a chigger but still not as good as a man. "A stinking pig has a shot at life, but not me? Good grief, what kind of world is this anyway?!"

Since I actually do exist, I'm happy to share the land with pigs and chiggers.

OK, back to the pigs existing. There are millions of pigs, and the fact of the matter is hardly any of them, like less than 1%, would exist if they weren't being bred for food. Think about it, no farmer is going to breed 5,000 pigs just to have them standing around. He's trying to make money, not clutter up the farm with useless pigs. Therefore, if no one ate pigs, pigs wouldn't exist in any quantity. So if you're a pig, and you realize all this, you are going to do what you can to make sure people eat more pork, because that's the only thing that gave you a shot at life.You're not going to have piglets without that policy, however revolting it might otherwise be to you.

Just today, I had four slices of bacon. And I feel good about it, because I'm doing my part.