Oink: Man Loves Pig Storyville

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

MUSIC: Old MacDonald Had A Farm

Once upon a time, a pig was born.

A very clever pig indeed.

She had thoughts and dreams,

she learnt to do all sorts of things,

from how to count, to how to read,

though she never quite learnt how to fly...

..and as she grew and ate, and ate and grew,

her piglet brain expanded, too,

and so she studied really hard

all she heard and all she saw,

not wanting just to be a tub of lard.

Hello, I'm Dorothy.

I'm a young saddleback pig.

They say I'm just one of over two billion pigs

on earth at the moment.

Oh, sorry! That's my big brother.

He can recognise me because of the marks on my ears and on my bum...

..and that's Mum, six weeks ago now, with my sisters and brothers...

..and that's me....

popping out the back.

It doesn't take too long to get myself sorted.

I know it looks like a free-for-all, but it really isn't.

Each of us has our own teat.

The first-born gets the best upfront, and so on down.

I'm eighth out. It just takes a bit of a shove to find mine.

OINKING

TRANSLATION:

OINKING

ELECTRICAL BUZZ

PIG SQUEALS

MUSIC PLAYS

SHOUTING

HORN HONKS

THEY CONVERSE IN OWN LANGUAGE

PIGLET SQUEALS

ANIMATED CHATTER

That feels better.

Three weeks. Four kilos already.

We've been put together with a whole pack of all the pigs.

So now I have my family AND friends to play with.

Mum's still around and keeps us fed.

She is in a bad mood,

some of her older children were driven away yesterday.

I wonder where they've gone.

SIZZLING

TRANSLATION:

CHILDREN EXCLAIM

-GIRL:

-So many people don't want to know the truth.

I knew they were getting killed,

but I never knew it was going to happen like this.

Compared with human beings, it's just a weird feeling you get.

I was feeling sick when I was in there because there was, like,

blood and, you know, there are brains and it's just really...

We were like, remember to stand right, cos if you stand on the...

-Heel.

-Heel. You can...

-Just fade.

-..fade out.

It wasn't dead when they cut it up here.

So, yes, that was pretty gross, if you can say it like that.

There's nobody will stop eating it because they love it

and they kind of... everything, you know.

It's a big part of our life.

And it's also a big part for Denmark.

When other countries think about Denmark,

they think pigs and bacon and stuff -

and it's the way we earn money.

PIG SQUEALS

Six weeks. 10 kilos now.

We're lucky.

We can go out whenever we like...

..and we can eat all the time.

Lots of barley, oats, all sorts of things,

and they don't even make us work for it.

The men look after us really well.

-Where's the plane?

-The storm must have dragged it out to sea.

-What's your name?

-Ralph.

I don't care what they call me as long as they don't call me

what they did at school.

What's that.

-They used to call me Piggy.

-Piggy.

As long as you don't tell the others.

If we have the slightest opportunity to be unpleasant to people

or creatures, we will be.

So we are trying to invest others with what it is

that we are infected with...

..but in fact we're being rather unfair to pigs.

We're infected with a mean spirit.

I think that is one of our main traits

and we try to hide it under the guise of what we call civilisation.

But in fact we are repressing that

in the hope that we can be nicer than we are

because I think, secretly, we disgust ourselves.

HE HUMS A TUNE

Pigs.

Hm...

Ah, they are here.

Oh, well, he's here.

Oh, it's...

It's...

..George Orwell.

He's got...

..a cage full of rats round his neck.

Now, rats - are we too unkind to rats, I wonder?

We're definitely unkind to... You see, this...

Now, this one...this little pig... talking about pigs,

now that's a decent pig, isn't it?

But, you see, he's uncertain

whether he's going to be mean...

or nice.

Or proud. He's got a little bit of everything.

Malevolence, haughtiness.

And that's nice and poetic, really.

That is Old Major giving his speech.

"Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours?

"Let us face it - our lives are miserable, laborious and short.

"And the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end,

"we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty."

I mean, that one, there, that figure there is very human.

Look.

In fact, they look like businessmen, these two.

They're quite alarmed, watching the pigs...

..their fellow animals, if you like,

behaving in this hideously human way.

It's actually quite unpleasant.

I don't... The more I...

the more we chat about it,

the more I think we are...

we're doomed.

I mean, I've just been doing a book on Critical Critters,

how awful we are to them.

We're the...

We're the, er...

beasts, really.

Is it fun, I wonder?

To kill things?

Pigs are greedy, they snaffle away at it,

and go for anything and devour it.

They make pigs of themselves, and that's what we call them, you see.

We think they're horrible things, but they are most intelligent,

therefore most scheming.

Manipulators -

and we imbue the pig with that power.

So I think that's something we... decided this morning.

We don't like human beings much, do we?

BLOWS

Interesting.

They're better than we ever might have thought possible...

..and we eat the damn things.

What a shame.

Fat bastard.

"Apparently I'm being fattened up for some important occasion.

"How about you?"

HE CHUCKLES

Pig in the shit. There we are. That's...

and is it in his own, or is it in someone else's?

"Is it not crystal clear that all the evils that are visited upon us

"are the evils of human beings?

"Man is our worst enemy.

"Get rid of man and we will be free.

"And we can live life as we want to live it."

PIGS SNORT

A short digression on the pig, or Why Heaven Hates Ham.

The oldest and most tenacious

of all fetishes is the hatred, and even fear, of the pig.

It emerged in primitive Judaea

and was for centuries one of the ways -

the other being circumcision -

by which Jews could be distinguished.

Even though Sura 5, verse 60 of the Koran

condemns particularly Jews, but also other unbelievers,

as having been turned into pigs and monkeys,

a very intense theme in recent Salafist Muslim preaching,

and the Koran describes the flesh of swine

as unclean or even abominable,

Muslims appear to see nothing ironic

in the adoption of this uniquely Jewish taboo.

Real horror of the porcine

is manifest all over the Islamic world.

According to many ancient authorities,

the attitude of early Semites to swine

was one of reverence as much as disgust.

The eating of pig flesh

was considered as something special,

even privileged and ritualistic.

This mad confusion between the sacred and the profane

is found in all faiths at all times.

The simultaneous attraction and repulsion derived

from an anthropomorphic root.

The look of the pig and the taste of the pig

and the dying yells of the pig

and the evident intelligence of the pig

were too uncomfortably reminiscent of the human.

Porcophobia and porcophilia

thus probably originated in a night-time of human sacrifice

and even cannibalism,

at which the holy texts often do more than hint.

Nothing optional, from homosexuality to adultery,

is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting

and exact the fierce punishments

have a repressed desire to participate.

As Shakespeare put it in King Lear,

"The policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her

"for the very offence for which he plies the lash."

GENTLE GRUNTING

Good girl.

Hey, baby.

She usually wakes up first

and then she hangs out in the bed for a little while.

-Just like us.

-Making all these sounds, kind of like how people do -

and then, eventually, if one of us gets up,

then she'll run out and probably follow us.

There she goes.

TROTTERS CLATTER

Coco, come and get some food.

So then we give her her breakfast,

and then she usually eats that for a little while and then walks around.

Sometimes she'll try to get back into bed.

Sometimes we let her, sometimes we don't let her.

She really feels like any other pet to us.

It feels totally normal.

She's a cuddler. Like, she has to be either

right along your leg or in between your legs

-of right up in your face.

-I think she's like having a dog,

-it's exactly like having a dog that loves to cuddle...

-Yeah.

..but she's a pig -

and when people on the street ask where she sleeps,

and we tell them... "Mm... She sleeps in our bed!"

They're like, "What?!"

They think it's crazy.

She gets really upset

if there's a night where she doesn't sleep in here,

and it's so loud.

She'll make little noises, like, "Beep, beep, beep."

I don't know how to explain it -

but it's like, they're small and high-pitched

and they're not, like, scary or anything,

and I feel like that's her talking to you, like saying hi.

Like, if I get really low and she kisses my face,

she'll make those noises -

and then, if she wants something, like she wants to go to bed...

-Deep grunt.

-..it's like very deep, loud grunts that are like...

-Mmmgh!

-Urggghh! ..and they just get super deep.

When we had Penny, which was our first pig,

she would come to school every day with me.

This was Penny, she had a lot more pink in her...

but you can almost even see there

-how she's enjoying getting her picture taken.

-Yeah.

-Right? Much different.

-She was little in that picture.

She didn't really look like that at the end of her life.

One morning she had a seizure and a stroke

-and we rushed her to the animal hospital, but...

-It was too late.

It was too late, and she passed away.

It was January 2nd, cos I remember it was right after New Year's.

I'd already been at school

and Jen called me during my first period and told me.

In the beginning it was impossible to talk about,

but I think we've talked about it, like, thousands of times,

so it's become easier.

You know, I had to tell my entire school of 300 kids

what happened to her.

Penny was great. Penny was our first pet.

We talked a long time about getting a dog...

COCO SNORTS

-Where are you going?

-Oh, now she might come up there.

..and we were travelling in South-East Asia

for a long period of time,

and we could see how there were other animals

that had really deep connections to people.

Want me to move this?

SHE SNORTS

I feel like she can tell when I'm sad or when I'm sick.

I find her super comforting.

COCO GRUNTS

Sorry.

Come here.

If we lived in, like, a bigger house,

we wouldn't let her have run of the whole house,

but because we live in just like a one-room apartment,

it's not that big compared to, like, the size of her original pen.

Is Coco ready?

Coco, spin.

Good girl. Treat!

Coco, jump.

Good girl. Treat!

Coco, shake.

Oh, you're a good girl. Treat.

It takes like maybe a day if you wanted to really teach her -

and you just have to do it like a bunch of times in a row

and to reinforce with a little piece of food.

That's enough -

three tricks is good enough for this pig.

"Tears ran down her face as she took hold of the axe

"and tried to pull it out of her father's hands.

"'Fern,' said Mr Arable,

"'I know more about raising a litter of pigs than you do.

"'A weakling makes trouble. Now run along.'

"'But it's unfair,' cried Fern.

"'The pig couldn't help being born small, could it?'

"'If I had been born very small at birth, would you have killed me?'

"Mr Arable smiled, 'Certainly not,'

"he said, looking down at his daughter with love.

"'But this is different.

"'A little girl is one thing and a little runty pig is another.'"

SHE SNIFFLES

And I think that really happens...

..and it's just...

I think I just think about it being Coco.

It's sad.

-You've got the Cheerios?

-Yeah. You have the Cheerios, I have a bag.

Oh, I do have the Cheerios.

Come on, Coco.

Come on.

Good job!

# This little piggy went to market

# This little piggy stayed home

# This little piggy had roast beef

# This little piggy had none

# And this little piggy went wee wee wee

# Wee wee, all the way home

# So if you're ever sad If you're ever alone

# You can sing this little piggy song. #

11 weeks old and...you're back.

As you can see, it's been raining a bit.

I'm putting it on now, getting on for 35 kilos.

We had a real drama last night.

Four friends decided they didn't trust the men here.

They ran away.

After trying a few times, my friends worked out

that if they charged those horrid wires together,

they wouldn't hurt themselves.

God knows how they'll survive out there.

STRONG SOUTHERN AMERICAN ACCENT:

Basically, there was a lot of people around

that had pretty large hog farms at times,

and they used electric fence to keep them up.

Well, the electric fence goes down, they go through the fence.

Then they stay out there long enough

and they go from domesticated back to wild.

It's not just one person's problem any more,

it's become everybody's problem...

..and believe it or not,

some of them are actually vicious enough that they will attack you.

You have to kill 70% of your wild hog population on your place

each year just to maintain the same amount of numbers that you got.

So if we only kill 20%, that means the hog population

on our place is increasing drastically every year.

They're used to coming up where... close to homes and stuff,

where people actually have barns and have feed.

They'll come inside barns and stuff

and actually eat the high-protein feeds.

And that helps get them larger.

Can I have everybody's attention?

We're going to say a prayer

and we're going to let everybody get started on this food

cos I know everybody's just dying to jump in to all this good food.

If y'all will bow with me.

Heavenly Father, we thank the for this wonderful day you've allowed us

to gather together, in this holiday season,

that we can get together and give thanks to you

and for all the many blessings that you bestow on each one of us.

Just ask that you would bless this food now to nourish our body

and our body is thy service.

These things we ask in Christ's name. Amen.

Amen.

OK, y'all can form two lines down this buffet

and just help yourself.

CRICKETS CHIRRUP

GUNSHOT

GUNSHOTS

Until we come up with something better than what we're doing here,

we're not going to get rid of 'em -

and we're doing what we're doing now, it's just an effort,

we're not really accomplishing a whole lot, but we are getting a few.

DOG BARKS

Back up, Rooster, back up.

Danny's a friend of ours. We've known him for several years now...

Back up, I said.

..and any time we have a problem, Danny's the man we call.

Once you turn 'em loose...

..they get in his hayfields, root it up.

We go out there and run the hogs off of them.

To help the farmers out,

and give us something to do, too, cos we enjoy it.

They're one of the smartest animals in the woods.

They're smarter than any big buck.

The older hogs get really educated,

they know how to get away from a dog and won't hardly go in a trap,

so they are really hard to catch.

She's running one.

Hog!

Go.

SQUEALING

We take life.

We realise that it's the Lord's animal,

but the Lord puts us over the animal,

in charge of the animals, so we have to do that.

16 weeks. 55 kilos.

Almost doubled my weight in five weeks...

..but something's up.

Perhaps those friends who ran away were right.

What do these men want?

Why have they put me in here?

GRUNTING AND SQUEALING

Mummy? Mummy, where are you?

"At OrganInc Farms,

"he'd been one of the foremost architects of the Pigoon project,

"along with a team of transplant experts

"and a microbiologists who were splicing against infections.

"Pigoon was only a nickname.

"The official name was sus multiorganifier -

"but Pigoon was what everybody said.

"Sometimes they said OrganOink Farms, but not as often.

"It wasn't really a farm, anyway.

"Not like the farms in pictures.

PIGS SQUEAL

"The goal of the Pigoon project

"was to grow an assortment of foolproof human tissue organs

"in a transgenic knockout pig host."

"Organs that would transplant smoothly and avoid rejection,

"but would also be able to fend off attacks

"by opportunistic microbes and viruses,

"of which there were so many more strains every year."

In our pig bio banks, basically we have relatively few animals,

genetically modified, plus controls,

but we have the whole tissue spectrum.

So, my name is Eckhard Wolf.

I'm a professor of animal genetics and biotechnology

at the University of Munich,

and my topic is basically genetic engineering of pigs

for xenotransplantation, and also as models for human diseases.

I'm... I'm just a cardiac surgeon.

We transplant pigs' hearts into baboons.

Of course, it would be much easier to use baboons as donors for humans,

but the small non-human primates would not fit

regarding their organ size -

and for the larger ones,

it's very difficult to breed them, to maintain them,

and I think there would also be major ethical considerations

if we used non-human primates.

On the other hand, we can, nowadays,

with the modern techniques of genetic engineering,

adapt the pig as a donor.

Pigs are very similar

with respect to their anatomy and physiology to humans.

The whole digestive tract is very similar.

They have about the same size.

The skin, for instance, is extremely similar to human skin.

I'll just get changed.

Within the next four years, our aim is to produce baboons

with pig's hearts and they live well for three months.

So, up till now, it is a big hurdle.

These are my lucky shoes.

Green.

It's the right and the left ventricle.

-OK, the cannula.

-Cannula.

That's the heart, you can see.

The heart looks basically similar to a human heart.

You can't distinguish.

It's pink, has the same valves.

To use a species which you know very well,

pigs that we eat in Germany, I think 50 million pigs -

but you can't say, because you're eating pigs,

you can grow pigs for transplantation purposes.

That's a big, ethical difference.

That would scream, ja?

And, for me, it's strange, but it is so.

You can't do everything that you think you can do.

It is an ethical problem.

I hate the word "humanised" organs...

because they are not humanised.

For me, the brain is the most important thing.

The brain is human, the brain is a pig -

and you don't interfere with that.

So you just interfere with the body.

As a heart surgeon, I exchange the pump,

the heart is a pump, nothing else.

-When you say the word heart to me, I don't think of a pump.

-Yeah.

-I think of poetry and life.

-Yes, well, that's wrong.

That's wrong. You should talk about the brain -

and so, "My brain is going crazy," or something like that,

not, "My heart is going crazy" -

but I'm aware of the literature, of course.

Beats very well.

Some people would say it's an exotic work, it's a dangerous work,

it's like Frankenstein, but that's not true.

It's a nice way to solve a big problem of organ shortage.

10,000 sick persons

are waiting for a transplant in Germany,

and only 800 are done right now.

So... It's not a discrepancy, it's a disaster.

MONITOR BEEPS

CONTINUOUS TONE

MUSIC: Old MacDonald Had A Farm

That day, as Farmer Robb drove her on the his way,

our clever pig wondered where to, and why.

She somehow knew she was off to die.

She thought pigs can live 20 years or more -

but when the trailer turned and hit the motorway,

the truth dawned bright and sure.

It was not her mind that they cared for.

Hog roasts and chops are what you crave,

with nice, thick gravy and apple sauce.

Spare ribs for Sunday barbecues.

Sausages and mash or bacon butties.

Cured or smoked?

Red sauce or brown?

What is your taste?

What is your choice?

Prime cuts...

..or just a bag of scratchings in the pub?

On much of the planet,

most meat animals get antibiotics every day of their lives.

Not to cure illnesses,

but to fatten them up and to protect them

against the factory farm conditions they are raised in.

In the United States,

possibly 80% of the antibiotics sold every year go to farm animals,

not to humans,

creating resistant bacteria that move off the farm

in water, in dust, in the meat the animals become.

We stand today on the threshold of the post-antibiotic era,

in the earliest days of a time when simple infections

will kill people once again.

CLOCK BEEPS

PIGS SQUEAL

PIGS SQUEAL

SQUEALING STOPS

SHEEP BLEAT

We grow so fast.

Six months old and hitting puberty.

We consume all the time.

Whenever we want to -

and, being greedy...

..we eat like pigs.

A big nose can draw in a volume of air

and I can distinguish odours like...

People always say, "How did you stand it?" I never noticed it.

I really never noticed the odour of decomposition.

And I had my 35mm camera calibrated

so it was on focus on the pig in the ground.

BUZZING

Once people find you're working with decomposing pigs,

they automatically think that you're using it

to estimate the time of a human...

..cos the skin and everything

is closer to a human than anything else.

The same insects that decompose humans

also decompose pigs.

You know, most of them do.

As I used to say, after six days, all you had was a few bones

and a hank of hair and a snout or two.

You know, you didn't have much.

SHEEP BLEAT

GUNSHOT