The Idler

Country Diary 72: Breaking the Law

WELL, you try and do something good and you only get hassle. Yesterday morning we had a knock at the door from our local environmental health officer. He had come round to tell us that according to a law that was brought in two years ago, what we had done with our pigs—that is to say, have them killed at home— was illegal. You are not allowed to kill and eat your own pigs. The law says that you have to take them to the slaughterhouse. This is, they say, so they can be checked by the slaughterhouse for disease. We argued that it is surely more humane to have them killed at home, because the pig does not suffer the stress of being bundled into a van and then lined up on the racks in an unfamiliar place and killed. He actually agreed that meat that has been killed at home, stress-free, tastes better than meat that has gone through the abattoir. So that is why our meat tasted so good: because it was killed at home. But that is illegal now. Our meat is illegal. So that means that pork that tastes as pork is meant to taste is now illegal. No one will be able to try it unless they don’t mind outlawing themselves. Also, an age-old custom has been outlawed. For millennia, smallholders have killed and eaten their own pigs. It is the basis of the cottage life. And today around the round, from Mexico to Moldavia to Uruguay to Africa to Vanuatu, country people kill and eat their own pigs. But we are no longer allowed to do this in the UK, where they would prefer we eat meat that has been appallingly treated in factory farms than compassionately and humanely give the pigs and happy life and an instant death. And surely the it is a basic human right, to raise and kill and eat and share your own animals. Insane, truly insane.

ENDS