The Upside Down: Confessions of a Pig-Keeper

With his characteristically imperishable wit, Quentin Crisp once observed that “it’s no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying ‘really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer’. By then, pigs will be your style”. 

I was never cut out for ballet, so pigs have been my style for more than 20 years. 

With my pig partner Dave, I’ve raised them, nurtured them, and (mostly) loved them. We’ve kept Tamworths, Saddlebacks, Berkshires, British Lops, Gloucester Old Spots, and Oxfordshire Sandy & Blacks in various combinations. I’ve watched them being born and fed them by hand. 

I feel an affinity to them, a closeness that I feel for no other farm animal. My best days start with me feeding them breakfast and giving them a good scratch behind the ear. 

And, despite all of this, I still choose to eat them.

Eating pigs has a long history. 

The original wild pigs – Sus scrofa or wild boar – evolved on the islands of south-east Asia more than 2.5 million years ago and spread through Asia and into the Near East. Roughly 10,000 years ago, one branch was domesticated by Neolithic farmers in what is now southern Turkey and northern Mesopotamia, and the other branch was tamed and farmed in what is now China. China remains the world’s largest producer and consumer of pork.

But domesticated pigs weren’t universally successful. 

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Although good at hoovering up human food waste, pigs also need a lot of water and grain and can’t survive solely on grass like sheep, goats, and cattle. Nor do they produce wool or milk, and they can’t plough fields. 

Where pigs thrived were in the early cities of Egypt, the Aegean, and Mesopotamia. In the more arid, rural cultures of the Levant, pigs were much less common. One theory about their taboo status in Judaism, and later Islam, is that they were seen as emblems of decadent urban cultures like that of the Philistines. 

Even in cultures where pigs thrived, to be a ‘pig’ implies gluttony, stubbornness, and a lack of attention to personal hygiene. In fact, pigs are the only farm animal that makes a sleeping nest (which they keep spotless) and use a designated latrine area well away from where they sleep. They just don’t look clean. 

What they undoubtedly are is intelligent. Like dogs they can be easily housebroken, taught to fetch, and come to heel. Pigs can learn to dance, race, pull carts, and sniff out landmines. They can even be taught to play video games, pushing the joystick with their snouts, something that even chimps struggle to master. They are gregarious, playful animals.

So, why eat them? It’s a good question. 

How can you feel deep affection and admiration for an animal and then choose to kill and consume it? An important consideration is that the pigs we raise exist for that sole purpose. They depend on us for their survival, and we go out of our way to ensure that their 10 months of life – that’s how long it takes to raise a pig of 100kg – are as happy and stress-free as possible. The decision to end their lives is never taken lightly. It’s a serious business and we offer them thanks – each one individually – as they depart.  

No one who cares for their animals enjoys this farewell. For me, it is accompanied by the responsibility that every last scrap of the animal should be transformed into delicious food – sausage, ham, bacon, brawn, salami, paté, black pudding. They are honoured and exalted for their sacrifice, providing hundreds of delicious meals, becoming the centrepiece of many village celebrations. It feels like an ancient way of repaying the debt. 

But the unavoidable truth is that we eat way too much meat, which is not good for our bodies and disastrous for the planet. As the great philosopher of sustainable agriculture Simon Fairlie puts it, eating meat is a “benign extravagance”. 

Raised on a smaller scale, as part of a properly thought-through process of regenerative farming, livestock still have a valuable part to play. And, of course I would say this, particularly pigs. I’m with William Cobbett: “A couple of flitches of bacon are worth 50,000 Methodist sermons and religious tracts.” 

But, however many times I do it, I never find it easy. 

There’s a powerful pig-killing scene in Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke’s beautiful novel of rural Ireland, I Could Read the Sky: “The pig’s eye is like the eye of priest. Very calm, very sure. I’m no longer sure of anything. Looking at the eye of the pig with his blond lashes, you’d think he could do sums quicker than you.”

Bacon or no bacon, I think of these lines every time our pigs trot down the ramp and into the holding pen at the abattoir. It’s my choice, not theirs.