This week the New York Times reported that we’re one step closer to using pigs as organ donors thanks to breakthroughs in gene-editing. I wonder what would happen if we had to choose between using pigs to save lives and using pigs for bacon. With a carefully worded ballot question, bacon might come out on top …
I just finished Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. It’s an engaging and informative exploration of what it means to eat meat which, 99 percent of the time, means eating products of the industrial food system. If there’s any point driven home consistently and powerfully over the course of the book, it’s that our system of …
If you’re Muslim and in a life threatening situation for lack of food, consumption of pork is allowed, but don’t enjoy it and only eat enough to solve the immediate crisis. That’s my understanding of the Islamic Law of Necessity as it pertains to prohibited food. I, for one, don’t have the comfort that …
In Islamic jurisprudence, the law of necessity states: That which is necessary makes the forbidden permissible. (Let me state straightaway that whatever I write about Islamic food prohibitions has been learned in about two hours of internet searching, and I’m quite possibly the last person who could claim authority on any religiously derived law. That …
Early this spring, I was at a farm in the town next door and couldn’t help but notice the pigs. Everywhere, all sizes, rooting around. There were bales of hay strewn about in the snow, and the pigs were digging in. American Guinea Hogs were popular with homesteaders in the 1800’s for their ability to …
The last time we kept pigs was seven years ago, and in the aftermath I swore I wouldn’t do so again. The pigs were Tamworths raised by a guy named Frank from Ellsworth, Maine, who’d bring his pigs to the Blue Hill Fair at the end of every summer, the same fair immortalized in E.B. …
I fell in love with Mona before I even knew her name. This was not a classic case of love at first sight. In fact, there’s nothing about her appearance that’s all that extraordinary. This is what happened: Mona presented herself before me and proceeded to violate my personal space and, then, without warning, dropped …