Edgar’s Mission: “I am Not Your Christmas Ham” Of pigs, Honour and Activism

By Pam Ahern

Pam Ahern's Biography

Grew up loving, caring for and rescuing cats and dogs while eating assorted other animals until the day I woke up to the fact that the kindest thing you can do for animals is not eat them! My mission now is to help others on their journey to this same realisation.

Currently residing in Central Victoria with a menagerie of animals, all with dubious and colourful backgrounds. Looking out my window each day I see my dear friend in Edgar Alan Pig quietly lazing away with the dogs and ask myself “why is one friend and one food?”

How have we got it so wrong? Working to make things right and the world a better place is now my journey. Working away at my computer each day with a cat on my lap has bought me to another revelation, “who ever invented polar fleece didn’t have a cat!”

Seize the day!

Edgar’s Mission: “I am Not Your Christmas Ham” Of pigs, Honour and Activism

Sharing my life with pigs has bought a new level of commitment to advancing their cause.

Edgar Alan Pig, a land race large white cross male and a most handsome devil at that, along with Miss Pompy Doo, Daisy, Lily, Faith and dear Alice, all ex "food animals", has more than shown me the simple life these gregarious animals yearn.

While some may argue that it is anthropomorphic drivel to say animals can have desires, given Darwin's evolutionary theory of a common ancestry and similar biology and physiology is makes common sense, what would be anthropomorphic is to say they have the same desires as humans. The huge difference in their personalities is no coincidence, rather a clear indication of the "individual self" pigs are possessed with, yet rarely allowed to express.

These inquisitive animals are naturally friendly, eagerly approaching and greeting the other animals as we go about our activities here at Edgar's Mission. I have come now to recognise many of the varied vocalisations they make and can even go some of the way to interpret them. In particular their deep guttural greeting, many times I have heard this before in piggeries and never fully understood it until now.

We humans have become very good at teaching animals to understand our language but little effort has been placed on understanding theirs. Millions of years of evolution have gone into making a pig a pig, yet intensive farming practices denies these animals means to satisfy most of their natural behaviours; means to root around, build a nest, wallow in mud, and Edgar's personal favourite to laze peacefully under a tree.

Welfarist, rightist, abolitionist, from whatever perspective one comes all claim to be making a better world for the animals. While just what "better" means and how far does one go in achieving this goal is not only a personal choice but the source of angst and conflict between those with concern for animals. I am left wondering how honourable are the motives of those who seek to reduce the stress in the lives of farm animals simply to improve the quality of their meat. Does it really matter to the animal when the end result will be the same brutal death or beleaguered life?

Is death the worst option when one considers a lifetime of frustrated natural behaviours, cruelty and human indifference. And herein lies the problem, do we work with industry or not? If one is to work with industry small increments can be made to improving the lives of farm animals, as has clearly been demonstrated by the likes of Temple Grandin. But "is it better that I hit my wife with a padded baseball bat?" the wife abuser asks. So our dilemma poses the question "does improving the lot of farm animals do anything to enlighten the wider community of just how farm animals both live and die, or does this simply entrench these practices further?"

I remember all the time that "my flock" was once in their number. The problem being that while we wait for the collective conscience of the community to catch up with the ethical imperative of a humane world, animals will still be meat or food producing machines. Inherited values and commercial interests provide insulation for some that prevents them from being touched by the plight of farm/food animals. So does it then follow that given the world will not go vegan overnight regardless of the animal rights or welfare, human health or ecological issues, anything we can do to sow the seeds if change is a positive

Each night as I bed Edgar Alan down, I cradle him in my arms, well actually it is just his head these days given the constraints of his size versus my size and ask myself, "What have I done today to help their kind". The issue is so big and complex that sometimes it seems almost beyond reach we can achieve anything.

The reality is that those who work to free animals from our food chain are cultural engineers for social change and this is not always an easy lot. Becoming despondent with such a complex issue and constricted by time I am spurred by a great quote by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., who said, "Don't say you don't have enough time.
You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."

Our task is then how best to use this time in keeping with our principles of fairness, justice and compassion. To act with honour and integrity. There is little doubt that the intensive farming community is under fire and in damage control mode as the veil of ignorance that has long protected and shielded their egregious practices from the public is lifted.

The public is slowly waking up to the inescapable biological reality that animals used for agricultural industries have the capacity to suffer, much like domestic pets and the realisation that the knife is just as sharp to the cow, pig, sheep or chicken as it would be to their pet cat or dog.

I feel our task as activists for the animals is to always act with honour and armed with the knowledge our cause is just, to be propagators of the seeds of change, to present the reality of just what is happening to animals on our watch and how the role of the "good shepherd" has been abdicated. Frustrated by the slow progress of our cause we must never dampen our commitment to it.

The fact that the animal based agricultural sector is running scared is to our credit, but we cannot rest here. Australia Pork Ltd spokesman, John Lamont was quoted in the Weekly Times as describing animal activists as "These calendar pests" that "pop up at Christmas each year and then disappear". If this is true we have failed our cause.

Each and every day we must be the voice of the over 460 million farm animals killed every year, add to this the untold number that languish in battery cages and sow stalls throughout the country. He went on to question the authenticity of photographic evidence of the routine (not worst) suffering of pigs. Such typical rhetoric is something activists are familiar with, so too are charges of "extremism" and various other character assignations.

While I acknowledge that the bible tells us Jesus said in adversity to "turn the other cheek" I understand fully that many activists are running out of cheeks to turn, our resolve must be strengthened by the fact we are acting righteously and with honour and not get bogged down with petty issues that will not assist the voiceless animals.

While the greater public accepts the oxymoron that killing animals for food can be achieved humanely and without animal cruelty, a Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and various Codes of Practice ensures animals can be treated in any many and varied callous and often brutal ways. Whether these welfarist laws are enforced or not is for another article. What needs to be exposed is the routine everyday life of intensive farm animals that is never seen, for it can never meet with community expectations of humane and just treatment.

Our task is to take public perception right up to the very husbandry practices we wish to end, trusting in the value of a compassionate conscience that will call the individual to question the reality behind many practices they have held for so long above reproach. I for one, do not wish to see the long-term proliferation of alternative systems (which allow greater behavioural expression) I want to see no systems that allow for a legitimate means to kill healthy animals. The legislation has failed animals, the RSPCA routinely fails them, and we must not.

Clearly we must temper what we want to achieve with what we can, recognising the need to set achievable goals, remembering that most of us were one-time meat eaters. So do we become a quasi advertising campaign for free range meats and eggs? To say yes would mean sanctioning the death of the likes of Edgar Alan and his now "free" friends, and I trust you would know my answer. A free-range life while affording the animal some semblance of a normal life, it is a life that is still governed by profit and ruled by the same death that greets their intensively raised cousins and in the case of chickens the males still never see the light of day.

Our role, as I see it is not to tell people what to eat and even not to eat, it is to spark the flame of compassion that burns however dimly within us all. People do not change because some one tells them to do so, or even because someone belittles of ridicules them. Short of holding a gun at their head they change because they want to, because someone was nice to them.

Each individual must do what they feel is right, the first step is getting them to think about how their food got to their plate, once ignited I fail to see how a just and honest soul could gorge on the carcass of a sentient creature. We can talk cognitive abilities, capacity to reason and have emotions, brain function etc until the literal cows come home alas, while we are doing so we are diverting attention away from the issue at hand and that is, animals are suffering right here, right now on our watch. Ghandi said, "We must be the change we wish to see".

For the love of all the Edgars, Pompys, Daisys, Lilys, Faiths and Alices of the varied farm animal species I will act with honour to end their suffering, it will always be to my chagrin I cannot end it today.