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China’s Breeding Giant Pigs That Are as Heavy as Polar Bears
- pugworthy 7y agoWarning - auto-play videos abound
- axaxs 7y agoNot an overly helpful comment, but this is loosely the premise behind the movie 'Okja' on Netflix. It was an interesting idea and made you see both sides. Weird it seems to be coming true.
- ethbro 7y agoTrue story: I stopped eating pork after watching Okja and reading up on pig intelligence. That final scene... oof. (bawl)
- pnutjam 7y agoI heard this joke when I was young and never really got it until I was older. --------------- A TV reporter became lost on the back roads and stopped at a farm to get directions. As he was talking to the farmer he noticed a pig with a wooden leg. “This could be a great story for the Six O’Clock News. How did that pig lose his leg?” he asked the farmer. “Well”, said the farmer, “that’s a very special pig. One night not too long ago we had a fire start in the barn, and that pig squealed so loud and long that he woke everyone, and by the time we got there he had herded all the other animals out of the barn. Saved them all.” “And that was when he hurt his leg?” asked the journalist anxious for a story. “Nope, he pulled through that just fine.” said the farmer. “Though a while later, I was back in the woods when a bear attacked me. Well, sir, that pig was nearby and he came running and rammed that bear from behind and then chased him off. He saved me for sure.” “Wow! So the bear injured his leg then?” questioned the reporter. “No. He came away without a scratch. Though a few days later, my tractor turned over in a ditch and I was knocked unconscious. Well, that pig dove into the ditch and pulled me out before I got cut up in the machinery.” “Ahh! So his leg got caught under the tactor?” asked the journalist. “Noooo. We both walked away from that one.” says the farmer. “So how did he get the wooden leg?” asked the journalist. “Well”, the farmer replied, “A pig like that, you don't eat all at once”!
- dunstad 7y agoHow awful. Imagine if the subject of this was a dog instead, it would anger so many people.
- tempestn 7y agoIndeed, that's kind of the point.
- Judgmentality 7y agoSocial mores are part of being human. We're full of all sorts of contradictory beliefs and principles. Trying to reconcile all of them will quickly make you a crazy hermit. On the topics of pigs, dogs, and pets; most people don't realize how intelligent and affectionate cows are. Dairy farmers often love their cows more than their dogs. And the farmers that have dairy cows and other cows have this mental barrier where one group is food and the other is family. I bet most people that have eaten a hamburger have never pet a cow. This is not some meat-is-murder tirade - I'm not even vegetarian. It's just neat to think about the assumptions that construct our worldview.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rjf72 7y ago> I bet most people that have eaten a hamburger have never pet a cow. Given that most Americans have definitely never pet a cow, and I'd go as far as to propose most have probably never even seen a cow in person, that's probably a very safe wager. But what percent of people that have pet a cow, would you wager also do eat beef?
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoPer your last sentence, I'd have thought vegetarianism would be much higher amongst city dwellers.
- UltimateFloofy 7y agoIf you read Animal Farm, there's a reason why Orwell made the pigs the most clever leaders of the farm.
- spraak 7y agoAnd other animals?
- JeanMarcS 7y agoOkja ? https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3967856/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3967856/
- fouc 7y agoThe meat-eating utilitarian vegetarian tries to pick meat from larger animals over smaller animals. Since you get more meat per unit of pain inflicted. So Beef > Pork > Chicken. But if pigs can be bred to be as big as cows that helps a lot!
- maxerickson 7y agoThe definition of vegetarian stretches ever further. I guess you could just strike that word without changing your meaning.
- ASalazarMX 7y agoI think it's helpful, if it describes people who would prefer a full vegetarian diet, but understand that humans are omnivorous and need meat from time to time.
- Skunkleton 7y agoThere are plenty of ways to express that you value vegetarianism without making false or misleading titles. Part-time vegetarian would be fine.
- mc32 7y agoYeah but people readily accept almond milk and rice milk, etc... and say, “language changes.” And vegetarian “sausages”.
- Skunkleton 7y agoSure, but I would be pretty annoyed if someone sold me almond milk as "utilitarian milk".
- Skunkleton 7y agoOh, and also many countries do not allow almond milk to be labeled as milk in any way.
- murat124 7y agoIsn't the availability of water resources a great concern for polar bear size pigs? Pigs are known for their high water needs and I imagine XXXL pig would even need more.
- blakesterz 7y agoGood question. I wonder how that scales? Do 3 100 pound pigs need more or less than a single 300 pound pig? What about food as well? Maybe even waste, is there less or more or the same coming out?
- throwaway07Ju19 7y agoWhat about from an ethics standpoint ? Is there less suffering when you compare a single 300 pound factory farmed pig to 3 100 pound pigs ?
- Merrill 7y ago>Big Bill, the largest hog ever recorded at 2,552 lb (1,157 kg), was a Poland China. Poland Chinas rank highest in U.S. pork production in pounds of hog per sow per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland_China However, "Poland China" has nothing to do with China, and it is a US breed originating in Ohio. Hogs grow quite large. Due to the shortage and the rising prices, farmers are letting their hogs grow larger, rather than marketing them at the usual weights. The meat may be a little fattier and not as tender in the older animal, although Chinese cusine may not care about that. But it's not like they are genetically engineering giant mutant pigs.
- technotony 7y ago> it's not like they are genetically engineering giant mutant pigs. No but they've gene edited pet dwarf pigs: https://www.nature.com/news/gene-edited-micropigs-to-be-sold-as-pets-at-chinese-institute-1.18448 https://www.nature.com/news/gene-edited-micropigs-to-be-sold...
- thrower123 7y agoMost of the people that I've ever known who grew pigs only kept them for a year. The sow would have a litter in the spring, they feed up the piglets all summer, then slaughter them before winter. Pigs are pretty easy and efficient sources of protein grown like that - on a family-scale farm you have plenty of excess produce and food waste anyway.
- colordrops 7y agoKind of an odd comparison considering most people don't have an intuitive understanding of the size of a polar bear.
- capsulecorp 7y agoTotally agree, they should have measured it in golden retriever units. This giant China pig = 15.74 golden retrievers! /s
- linksnapzz 7y agoUnclear what could et more stale dinner rolls and discarded bakery pizza, a single scalar 1100lb megapig or a massively parallel array of sixteen hungry goldens. The golden retrievers would eat it faster though; my impression is that pigs tend to chew and take their time....
- 4ntonius8lock 7y agoSuch a strange article. It has two facts: 1- There is a shortage of pork due to recent outbreaks 2- Large pigs have been breed in China. The article then seems to insinuate that 2 is due to 1. But the article offers no stats or even any evidence that there is a causal effect. Worse, the article seems to imply large pigs are a Chinese thing, when America holds the record for large hogs. Mostly large pigs are bread as male breeding pigs and to compete in local events (as therefore as part of a pig breeders boasting status). As far as I'm concerned, large pigs are not breed so much for consumption (though they will be consumed eventually) Just very odd. Absolutely no journalism in that article. It just mentions two facts and draws fuzzy conclusions from it filled with innuendo. I'm not sure Bloomberg was ever a very quality source (as say the Washington Post or NYT), but I'm quite surprised at the trash rag style they are putting out lately. I also wonder why it's making the front page of /.
- wyxuan 7y agoI think you are just slandering Bloomberg. The Chinese are growing pigs to become bigger because they are in need of pork, in sacrifice of taste. America’s record pigs are just for that, to get a record.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y agoI looked it up. China's pigs average of 110 kilos. The only stat mentioned in the 'news' piece (other than things like 'up to') is producers wanting to 'increase size by at least 14%'. Average pig weight in america at slaughter is 127 kilos. The giant pig from the image is likely a competition pig, just like in America. As far as I know, it's not economically effective to raise pigs past a certain point if it's for meat production. See how you were jumping to conclusions and even inserting things that were never mentioned 'in sacrifice of taste'? That's what I meant in my critique and why I called the style 'trash rag'. News pieces like this are filled with innuendo and are intentionally kept nice and broad so each person can read into it whatever they want. Reminds me of the song: We can do "The Innuendo" We can dance and sing When it's said and done we haven't told you a thing We all know that Kraft is king
- aaron695 7y agoReminds me of 'frankenswine' as the Sun puts it = https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7905141/sperm-mutant-double-muscle-pigs-facebook-frankenswine/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7905141/sperm-mutant-double-mu...
- wvlia5 7y agoOkja
- jjcm 7y agoAre they more efficient though? Right now the average seems to be 4kg of grain per kg of pork[1]; if these large pigs require 5kg per 1kg of pork, then does them being bigger create any benefits in a shortage? Another question is growth rate - how fast are they growing? Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, but their end size seems to be one of the less important factors in the mix when it comes to efficient pork production. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/02/era-of-cheap-food-over https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/02/era-of-chea...
- throw_xyzyz 7y agoCurrently in China, from what I understand, it is not about efficiency per unit food but per live animal. Their herds were severely depleted by disease and they need to make the remaining pigs count for more.
- dvt 7y ago> ...their end size seems to be one of the less important factors in the mix when it comes to efficient pork production Biological processes are often non-linear, so your intuition is probably correct. Here's an interesting paper[1] I found that looks at body size, energy metabolism, and lifespan. [1] https://jeb.biologists.org/content/208/9/1717 https://jeb.biologists.org/content/208/9/1717
- erudition 7y agoYour intuition is spot-on. Feed conversion efficiency drives profitability in the pork industry. The average live weight of US hogs at market is right around 280 lbs., not because the animals can't get larger than that, but because growing them beyond that size cuts into profits as efficiency drops. I think pigs-as-big-as-polar-bears was just an opening hook to draw in eyeballs that would otherwise have skipped over yet another headline about African Swine Fever (ASF), which is covered in the second half of the article. ASF is the real meat of this story (pun intended, sorry) and the most significant factor currently impacting Asian pork production.
- drewmol 7y ago
- russdill 7y agoMore relevant than ever. Some More News on Feral Hogs coming for your children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MTMCo8JbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MTMCo8JbQ
- sAbakumoff 7y agoGriffins already did it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEo0wnKoixo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEo0wnKoixo
- bayesian_horse 7y agoSize doesn't matter that much. Food-to-Meat conversion and the time to market normally matter more, in terms of profitability. Also, the bigger the pigs get, the worse their health will be. Unhealthy pigs don't survive to market, convert their food less efficiently, get rejected at the slaughter house or their meat suffers in quality. Next problem: You want similarly sized pigs for efficient slaughtering. Those "polar bears" won't fit into a standard line. But I guess China isn't that far into their agricultural industrialization yet. They are apparently also playing catch up in terms of food security and management of animal diseases. The last two points are hampered by the general lack of transparency.
- latchkey 7y agoI've traveled extensively, by motorbike, in the northern vietnam region bordering southern china. I started in the south of vietnam, which has pigs, dogs, cats, buffalo, chickens, ducks and everything else you can imagine just running around wild. At some point as you travel north, you stop seeing pigs by the side of the road. You start to cross checkpoints where they spray your tires and places where they've put chemical (disinfectant) soaked hay on the roads that you're expected to drive over. You see signs everywhere warning people to spray things down. The swine flu is real.
- anonthrowaway28 7y ago1. Pollution of air, water, and soil (feces-spraying ponds) 2. Antibiotic resistance in humans because of overuse in pigs (it doesn't have to be the same medication, only the same/similar pathway mechanism) 3. Pandemics (zillions of pigs kept in close proximity to each other and humans) 4. Climate change (2nd or 3rd most anthropogenic source) 5. Some other hippie reasons 6. More expensive than plant-based food