River Cottage

A message from Hugh (Tuesday 11 October):

Seems like that there's been a bit of a furore in the press today about some remarks I made about pigs and puppies while being interviewed by the Radio Times.

It's all a bit strange, because we were talking about an article I wrote almost 10 years ago.

The point I was trying to make, of course - if I really need to spell it out - is not that we should eat puppies, but that we should be looking after our pigs - and indeed all our farm animals - with considerably more care than we currently do.

Here's the full, original article from 2003,

Hugh x

Of pigs and puppies (2003)

I took a pig to slaughter this morning. I'll be roasting it on a spit this weekend.

It's become an annual event on the farm, which means that each summer I have to select one of my three or four weaners for an early exit. It's a tough choice - one that effectively deprives the victim of another four months of pretty relaxed outdoor living: wallowing in a mud-bath we've made for them, rooting around among the trees at one end of their paddock, basking in the sun, and, twice a day, tucking into a feast of garden and kitchen scraps (broad bean pods and beetroot tops are current favourites). Last year the decision was made a little easier for me.

The day before I was due to cart one off, I went into the run to feed them, and one of them ran straight up and bit me on the knee. `Tomorrow he'll wish he hadn't done that,' I said to myself, as I hobbled back to the house.

This year I had no such help. I thought I'd try and pick out the fattest one, but they've all done so well I couldn't decide which it was. In the end I made what I guess was a cowardly decision, in other words no decision at all.

I simply decided to back up the trailer, throw a few pignuts in, and pull up the tail-gate behind the first unlucky animal that wandered up the ramp. I didn't think I had a favourite, but as the almost-all-black sow with the pink stripe across her right leg nosed her way in front, I realised it was her. But I didn't turn her round.

It would have marked a descent into sentimentality. I didn't mope. I took her up to the abattoir, which thankfully is less than 15 minutes from home – near enough to call ahead and check there's not too much waiting time. Sometimes they'll go into a holding pen for a few hours, but today she walked out of the trailer straight into the slaughter corridor.

She walked slowly round the corner, sniffing in curiosity as she went, and less than a minute after she was out of sight I heard the crack of the stun gun. Dead, without so much as a squeal. I'll be nipping back later today to pick up the offal, and the blood for making black pudding.

They're smart creatures, pigs, and however much I try to stay mindful of the reason I bought them, by admiring their lengthening rack of ribs, sizing up their hams, and wondering what those bean pods might be doing for the flavour of the upcoming roast, it's hard not to be entertained by their antics.

I try to resist sentimentality – but take the view that good husbandry need not exclude the possibility of playtime. On one of those fiery hot days a few weeks back, we hosed them down, and they loved it, snapping at the jet of water like playful puppies. Perhaps that's when I picked out the black one as the biggest `character'.

I guess that some might take the view that it is easier to be responsible for ending the life of an animal if it is a dull, confined and miserable one, than if it is a fulfilled, free and natural one. All I can say is, not for me it isn't. Incidentally, I know the puppy simile is accurate, because right now we also happen to have ten of them.

Our springer-pointer bitch Dolly popped them out six weeks ago, and you couldn't pick a runt among them. Inexhaustible playmates, they have kept Oscar, and us, entertained for hours every day. Our plan is to keep one as a family pet, and long-term companion for Dolly. It seems to me somewhat arbitrary though, more or less an accident of culture, that the pig went to slaughter today, while the puppies are earmarked for a decade of pampering and play as family pets.

There's no doubt whatever that pigs can make affectionate pets – there are dozens if not hundreds of Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs curling up on suburban sofas all over Britain.

They can also be trained in a similar way to dogs. Everyone knows they can hunt for truffles. Less celebrated is their performance as `gun-pigs' – but apparently in parts of Eastern Europe they were once as popular as dogs for retrieving shot game in dense woodland. And the edibility of dogs, of course, is as culturally relative as the petability of pigs.

It is not the eating of dogs, in eastern cultures, that is barbaric. It is only surely the husbandry – or woeful lack of it – of the canine fatstock, that may rightfully incite moral outrage.

Reports suggest that in Korea dogs destined for the pot are treated with extreme cruelty. But for the sake of fairness, we should perhaps imagine our family pets living the life of an intensively farmed pig in a British pig unit. It's no picnic in there either. So perhaps the time is right for a bit of a cultural experiment.

We have already found homes for eight of the nine puppies. With one for us, that leaves one whose fate is still undecided. I say we should keep her for a while longer, and lavish just as much love and affection on her as we do on her sister and mother – not to mention our pampered pigs.

We might vary her diet a bit though – plenty of milk, cheese and cereals to help her pile on the pounds. All in all, we shall do everything to ensure she is happy, healthy and gets to do what dogs like to do. My free-range, outdoor-reared, organic puppy should be oven ready just in time for Christmas.