THE PLIGHT OF THE PIG IN THE NANNY STATE - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 61

Welcoming pigs back into the community may sound dotty because it seems so at odds
with the sanitized suburbia promulgated by the nanny state. But we know that recycling
food through pigs works because we did it during the Second World War - and if the proph-
ets of peak oil and global warming are correct, we may be headed for similar conditions.
It also looks as though the business of making Tottenham Pudding could become a simpler
and less energy intensive business. Tristram Stuart visited a firm in Japan which sterilizes
food waste by pasteurizing it at 90 degrees for just five minutes, and then inoculates it with
a Lactobacillus , that ferments the swill much as if it were yoghurt. The product keeps for
two weeks, is cheaper than other feed and conforms with Japanese recycling laws. 32
Local pigs are also necessary if we are to get the nutrients back to the land. Peter Brooks'
paper on 'Rediscovering the Environmentally Friendly Pig' remained unpublished because
the pigs which he urged should be fed with recycled waste were to be kept on large scale,
industrial farms, where manure accumulates in a heap that causes pollution and disposal
problems. 33 If we are to have industrial-scale food processing at all, then its waste nutrients
need to be cascaded back to mixed farms and smallholdings across the expanse of our land,
and the most viable way to do this is through pig-food. It can be done through selling bags
of subsidized compost, but at the current price of £10 for a 25 kilo sack, organic pig-feed
justifies the transport a lot more than organic compost.
The return of the backyard pig will not only sort out our food waste problems more im-
portantly it will enhance the cultural life of the nation. The pig has always been a mainstay
of the poor family's independence and of a community's food sovereignty. 'Pigs for health'
was an English expression; 'the pig pays the rent' an Irish one. It is because of the centrality
of the pig to the security and the aspirations of settled peasants - be they Papuan tribesmen,
the labourers of Larkrise, or the negroes of Maryland - that its life, its death and its after-
life are invariably imbued with ritual or religious significance. 34 'Stand by your Ham' is a
call that resonates more fully amongst a proud and independent peasantry than a bunch of
whingeing factory farmers, some of whom have probably never cured a ham in their lives.
'A couple of flitches of bacon', said William Cobbett, 'are worth fifty thousand Methodist
sermons and religious tracts.' 35
Reintegration into human society will also vastly improve the cultural life of pigs. 'Dogs
look up to us, cats look down on us,' Churchill is supposed to have said, 'but pigs treat us
as equals.' Pigs have as much to contribute to human society as the canine and feline races,
and as much to benefit. Once freed from the factory, they will again be rooting in nearby
woodland, sharing the life of the farmyard, snuffling around with chickens in the basse
cour , or lying pampered in a sty by the kitchen. The congenial existence of the household
pig is almost the first thing Flora Thompson describes in Larkrise to Candleford :