‘Can’t you have pork without killing the pigs?’
The telephone rings and, for once, I’m close enough to pick it up immediately.
“Hello, Stonehead Croft.”
“Oh hi, we’re calling about the piglets you have advertised,” said a woman’s voice. “We were thinking about getting a couple so we could have our own pork.”
“Okay, let me tell you about them then…”
As I described the pigs, it became apparent the lady speaking to me had her husband or boyfriend standing beside her as he’d ask questions and she’d relay information back to him.
We spoke for a good few minutes, in what seemed to be a fairly intelligent conversation about pigs, especially compared with some of the drivel I often get.
“…and you’ll be looking at sending them for slaughter from 24 weeks up to about 28 weeks…” I said.
“What? What do you mean slaughter?” she asked.
“Having them killed at the abattoir, before they go to your butcher.”
There was a gasp at the other end of the phone, followed by murmurings between the couple.
Then, “you’re sure we have to have them killed? I mean, can’t you have pork without killing the pigs?”
I was absolutely dumbfounded. Flabbergasted. Lost for words. My jaw was on the floor.
I’ve blogged before about the number of people who don’t know where food comes from and I’ve seen quite a few media reports over the years quoting surveys that find anything up to a quarter of consumers don’t know where their pork, bacon, sausages and beef come from.
But it’s still a shock to be smacked between the eyes with such ignorance.
After a very, very long pause, I tried to explain to the caller that pork is pig meat and that you can’t have pork without killing the pig.
“Oh my God, that’s horrible. I mean, we can’t have the pigs killed. They’re lovely. Oh no.”
There was a further murmured conversation between the lady and her partner. He sounded equally disturbed to discovered pork is the meat of dead pigs.
“I don’t think we can take the pigs then. Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. That’s so terrible…”
I hung up, shaking my head.
We really do live in a Time of Ignorance.
I had a wicked thought overnight. I should put the pork anthem on the answering machine…
That’s incredible, how on earth can people be so detached from their food. I’ll probably spend most of the day with my jaw on the floor too. I’ll also be wondering how people can put things in their mouth that they have no idea where it’s come from or what’s gone into it.
Gosh. I mean, gosh.
I thought it was bad when I mentioned my new pullets to someone a few weeks ago. She’d never heard the word before. She’s in her late 40s, and is a primary school teacher.
That’s so funny and sad at the same time. Presumably they’re now vegans or do they go back to buying meat in plastic packaging that hasn’t come from a dead animal?
Reminds me of the song we used to sing as kids:
Oh there is a happy land, far far away
Where they have eggs and ham three times a day
Oh how the piggies run, when they see the butcher come
Three slices off their bum, three times a day…
That’s almost the same version my late father learned, growing up in Glenstrathfarrar just before the First World War. It ran
There is a happy land far far away
Where we eat eggs and ham three times a day
See how the piggies run
When they see the farmer come
To take three slices off their bum
Three times a day.
He also had a teacher who made up rhymes to help kids remember things. This one was in quite broad Scots :
Great Goliath came down from Gath
And his brow was filled with wrath
Little David took a steen (stone)
And clinkit him atween the een.
(And clattered him between the eyes)
Must have been a good teacher as the old man remembered it to his dying day.
One of BB’s friends had no idea where pork came from when she came round for dinner one day. The really sad thing is her mother works in a butchers, clearly one that doesn’t sell meat from animals, only stuff ‘made’ in the factory!
When you said you had “another story” to tell, I thought you were joking or exaggerating.
You could at least have waited for summer to tell that story, now I’ve got to spend all day with my jaw dragging through the mud…
Shocking, truly shocking.
Don’t suppose you got the chance to explain about beef before the conversation ended?!
Un -believable……
I read this 10 mins ago and i am *still* shaking my head!
Stoney – truly that’s apocryphal? No? No? Did they think that the pigs knitted up a pork chop or two? Weaved some ham? Crotched bangers and bacon? Please, please call them back and let us know where they thought pork came from.
@Chookie – To be fair I had never heard the word pullet until I started keeping chickens either. In fact most words and phrases to do with chicken keeping I’ve never came across in my day to day life :S
Worth the wait : )
What can I say?
Please tell me these people aren’t allowed to breed!
No, not apocryphal. We get many stupid, dumb, ignorant, ridiculous, uninformed and even downright crazy telephone calls as a result of breeding and selling livestock. In fact, about a third of the calls we get leave us bamboozled, mystified or shrieking with laughter. Another third are from timewasters and chancers, leaving us with a relatively small number of genuine, informed potential “customers”.
And if we cast the net wider to the people we talk to and meet as a result of living the way we do, then the number of ignorant numpties rockets—especially where people from the suburbs and cities are concerned.
Recall that other phone call last week, from the lady who wanted to “save” our pigs?
Remember the man who wanted to keep a Berkshire pig in his flat? Or the man who wanted a cow the size of a dog to keep in his garden?
And the people who, when challenged on their feeding sandwiches to the pigs, responded that it was okay because the sandwiches were from Marks & Spencer?
And some of the comments in response to the post on how to skin a rabbit?
And some of the comments we get from some vegans/vegetarians?
Or from the anti-4×4 lobby?
And the numerous walkers who “know” they can go where they choose, leave gates open, wander into the boar pen, turn the electric fences off, etc etc.
I can think of scores more example, but I’ve finished my lunch and have work to do.
Wait till these people find out where eggs come from!
BTW, I think I’ve found a way you can get some quick cash out of the bike. Might have to wait until Spring though:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11232008/news/regionalnews/go__go__go_dancer_140297.htm
At our boarding school, a friend was put off eggs for years when, on dipping his spoon enthusiastically into a freshly boiled one, a prefect asked him “Do you realize that’s a hen’s period you’re about to eat?”
Also reminds me of an old Barney Miller show where they bust a gang who’s been stealing fur coats. The fresh-faced patrolman picks up a pile of coats and remarks on how incredibly heavy they are.
“It must be a relief to the little guys when they get it all shaved off.”
Shame you didn’t have time to explain where eggs, milk and honey actually come from.Or why vegetables are sometimes dirty.
I think somebody was taking the p!$$.
cheers
Another jaw on floor here – I still can’t believe what I’ve just read!!
I’d think twice before answering the phone; certainly not to be undertaken without a large glass of whiskey and a big box of tissues…
gob smacking.
Woodenhead, if you’d heard her reaction to my telling “the pig must die”, you’d definitely agree she wasn’t taking the mickey. She was genuinely horrified.
It’s putting a voice to those studies that find many people don’t realise meat products come from animals.
This is from the Independent back in 2004:
And these from The PigSite last year:
If children don’t know and aren’t told where their food comes from, they grow up to be adults like the lady who phoned us.
I a rolling here tears trickling down my face and esp. at the rabbit link. At the parachute center one day one of the girls that works there takes her cats. One cat came back with a baby rabbit. My hub and several other people said to knock it on the head with a brick.
She was furious, took it into the field and put it down a rabbit hole quote “for mummy rabbit to look after”
I broke the news to her when l saw her next time exactly what mummy rabbit would do to it, and added that pity l was not there as l would have solved the problem she was not happy with me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=714-Ioa4XQw
do you sell spider pigs??
There are some seriously stupid people in this world.
What I think is even more worrying is the fact that these two on the phone might start breeding themselves, start a new generation of mis-informed kids to continue the circle.
What the hell did they think happened……….. the pig laid a chop like a chicken with a egg?
You must have some patience stoney to continue a conversation as far as you do with some of these people.
You couldn’t make it up!
Gotta love the public, as its not legal to use them as bait.
Too funny, great blogging, thanks for telling us
SBW
And I thought a friend of mine was dumb…she thought watermelons grew on trees ‘just like oranges and cantaloupes’. Comparatively, she’s a frickin’ genious.
I would like to thank Disgruntled. All I could remember was “three slices off their bum” but the ditty popped into my mind on reading this fine post. PS. I thought you were a different type of stonehead, not that there’s anything wrong with that!
Ouch, my sides hurt !
what where they planing to do, slice a bit off when they needed a sandwich ?
Lifestyle Block over in New Zealand has picked up on this post, and I loved this response:
And for the record, I’m an Australian living in north-east Scotland. It’s definitely not England up here!
What does boggle the mind is exactly where the caller thinks chops etc come from?? I have spent all night thinking about where you could concievabley (sp?) think pork chops, pork steak, belly pork, roast leg of pork etc actually comes from if you don’t kill the pig!?
Think I shall ask some colleagues for their ideas…
Oh my word. Society has really detached itself from it’s sources.
I find this truly terrifying. Not the ignorance of these people, I’m afraid I’ve come to expect that from some.
Do these people really think they can go out and get a few ribs for the barbie, or a couple of chops for dinner, from a living animal? What sort of deranged psychopathy could lead anyone to that conclusion?
Oh well. we can presume they’re now vegan – dreaming of death-free bacon!
I don’t think they’d made the connection.
The lady said they’d moved up from Edinburgh and bought a house with an acre of overgrown land. They’d heard that pigs were good at clearing land and great pets besides. And they both liked pork and bacon.
Hence the plan of “lets get some pigs”.
What they hadn’t done was think through how a pig becomes those nice little packets of pork and bacon in the shop. I didn’t think to ask what they thought happened, but I suspect they thought it was something like milk, cheese, eggs, cream, etc. Happy farm animals producing nice things to eat while skipping through the fields—just like in TV commercials.
We have had a few people go off pork/keeping pigs before. They come out to see the pigs, whether to buy some or just to have a look, and then it suddenly dawns on them that “these pigs” are going to be “killed” to make their pork. Reality hits, their faces pale, their jaw drops and they start stammering about not buying pigs/not eating pork etc.
And we’ve had similar reactions when we point out that hens lay eggs and poo from the same orifice. That really, really upsets some people.
Reality isn’t too popular in a lot of quarters.
Utterly gobsmacked, but it did give dh and I a good laugh too. It is really worrying how far removed some people are from the knowledge of where the food on their table comes from though…
have you seen the episode of the simpsons where they are in the garden of eden and a live pig offers its ribs to homer…..or the episode of hitch-hikers guide at the party at the end of time….i thinks thats where these folks are coming from
Coincidentally, last night my 8 year old daughter was talking about a meal that one of her friends had told her about. My daughter asked me, “What’s tongue?” I answered: “It’s the tongue of a dead cow, and people eat it for meat.” She touched her own tongue. She looked at me intently. “What’s it like to eat it?” I, having only tried to eat it once or twice said, “It reminds you, as you see it on the plate and eat it, that meat is from the body of an animal.”
I absolutely agree that many adults do not know where their supermarket hamburger comes from. Age of Ignorance, or Age of Detachment maybe. It’s partly because our mega-stores, I think, hide the origin of food. When I was a child, we would go to a butcher in the closest city (Worcester, Massachusetts) to get our meat. My mother would say, “We’re going to the meat market,” and we would go. In the store, a small shop, it was entirely refrigerated. The men who worked their wore long, bloodied white aprons over heavy pants, muck boots, quilted shirts. They wore hats to keep their heads warm. There was sawdust on the floor. From the ceiling on big hooks, behind the counter, hung headless, footless, and skinless carcasses. There was more undressed meat than there was meat in the small refrigerated case.
Although there was nothing fancy about it, this destination was a treat when we were children — a cool, dark place on a sunny, hot day. Plus, there was always a big barrel of pickels in their brine right as you came in the door. You could reach in, grab one: the size of the whole cucumber. Fifteen cents in 1970.
I wonder if my own children would be charmed by this. Probably not. We have lost a lot of sensual and animal pleasures, in the convenient world that most of us live in.
Perhaps, now that I’m writing so much here, this is what is so interesting about reading your blog. It restores a connection to a part of life that has largely disappeared (in my world it has).
What?! You mean … you mean to say that pork, bacon and beef don’t grow on trees?!
Oh, no … I … unbelievable. I’ll have to tell everyone about this!
Sadly, since I work with the public quite a bit, this isn’t surprising.
People get quite upset when they see our milk cows have poo on them and are not spotless, 24/7. (The important bits get a rinse before milk collection…but that doesn’t seem to be enough.)
One of my favorites came from a student interning at a zoo with Rhinos. The rhinos had a giant medicine ball as a toy to play with. One of them liked to straddle it and sit on it.
She said at least once or twice a week someone would ask when the “rhino egg” would hatch.
Rhino eggs…
This post is certainly bring out the anecdotes. I particularly enjoyed this one on the Toypit forum, from Skullshine:
And for the doubters in various places, yes, we really do live on a croft in Scotland, we really do breed Berkshire pigs, and the conversation really did happen. Not all you find on the internet is a hoax.
He also does an awful lot more than what he says too!
And here’s a delightful tale from Ragiwarmbear on the Paleoplanet forum:
Where do these people think meat comes from? Soylent green anyone?
And PaleoAleo, read my immediate last comment aimed at doubters like yourself and also the comment at 14:45, 25 November.
Also, read some of the similar anecdotes coming through from various forums, including Paleoplanet.
There really are people like that out there and simply denying it because you don’t want to believe it is, in many ways, similar those people who deny the connection between live animals and meat.
thanks for stealing my innocence.
how am i supposed to eat turkey now that i suspect they hurt the little guy ?
They don’t hurt the turkeys. Being a turkey is so horrible that they all commit suicide just as they reach their prime. It’s true. It’s a FACT.
I don’t know if you get “Crank Yanker” types in UK,
but I do believe this was genuinely ignorant person, the kind who would believe
cotton came from sheep growing on trees.
This is all soooo scary.
I think the UK has a lot to learn from sunny Spain. Here even supermarket meat counters include whole carcasses; rabbits, piglets, lamb and are happy to explain what things are and also butcher them as you like. Anything in a plastic tray tends to have pictures of what animal is now deceased – which at the very least is pretty honest!
But then there is still a huge tradition of small holding, foraging and hunting so people haven’t lost the knowledge about what they eat.
i wish i could say i’m surprised but i go through this junk everytime family comes up to visit the farm. to save time and exasperation i’ve had to just let them believe that the large white chickens we had last time they were up have magically turned into just slightly smaller speckled grey chickens. as long as they don’t look in the freezer we’re all set. as far as their concerned chicken is vacuum sealed packets from the supermarket and that’s that. i haven’t had the heart to tell them that after 14 years of vegetarianism i’ve switched to a diet that contains some locally and humanely raised meats. they just wont understand the subtle differences between living sustainably and supporting the farmer down the road and living in denial while supporting major corporations and monoculture agribuisness. these are the same people who asked if the cheeses we make at home are american cheese, because we’re american!
good luck to you with dealing with the growing ignorance!
This makes me smile. My parents keep some pigs for rooting through the ground and for meat. Personally i’m a veggie but only because i don’t like the taste of meat. Some of my friends are horrified to learn that we actually kill the pigs and eat them. They don’t see how i can accept that as i’m veggie; but to be honest i love going and feeding them and getting to know them; i also love cooking good quality food which i believe our pigs to be.
The only problem with this is that we’re running out of names!
Some people are awesomely ignorant
Kids at my daughters old school thought milk came from the shop (Definately) and brown sugar is dirty.
Too sad. City kids grow up so far from reality.
Yes piglets are cute but when they grow up they are big and fat and edible. Hand me a bacon roll!