The 2004 winning pig and his happy farmer
I didn’t know what I was looking at when I frist saw the picture in the newspaper this morning but Steven explained to me that this is the winning pig from the yearly Pig God contest held here in Taiwan. If you look closely you will see the ears and the snout. The grey line is decorative paint for the pig.
The winning pig this year is 896 kilos, or 1975 pounds. This is almost 1 ton. No, pigs are not naturally that large in Taiwan, they are force fed for this special event.
The 2003 winning pig, ©2003 BBC
This is both sad and funny at the same time. As you can see in the picture above these pigs are too fat to even walk. Their legs are these tiny stumps that stick out their side and don’t even touch the ground when the pig lies on its tummy. How does a pig get this big? They pen the pig up so that it cannot move for two years and force feed them.
The farmers have to roll the pig to the scales to weigh it to see which one wins. After a pig is weighed it then has its throat cut in front of everyone attending. This is a religious ceremony carried out by Hakkas here in Taiwan, an old religion that has 4 milion followers.
2 responses so far ↓
Carly Tonner // November 19, 2007 at 00:41
This is a horrible contest and should be stopped. Pigs are known to be one of the most intelligent animal species, and they feel pain and suffering like us humans. Imagine being in the same spot for two years, eating when your not hungry, eating things that dont even taste nice like metal and sand. Pigs arnt ment to be this size. These poor animals grow to 4 times their normal size and cant even walk. Imagine how they must feel. It must take a while for the pig to bleed to death. It would suffer alot of pain. It’s wrong and needs to be stopped. When i see the pictures of the pigs it makes me so mad to think these people treat the pigs like trophys. They are just like the tickets to enter the competition. Seriously, cant they just make the carnival alot less bloody by making fake pigs made out of flowers and having a nice parade with them instead of this killing of these beautiful pigs. I know pigs are slaughtered anyway, they are used for food, but this is done in a humane way and the pigs dont have to suffer like these ones do. I dont think it’s funny either. It made me really mad when i read this and the writer said they thought it was funny.
James // November 19, 2007 at 14:54
I still think it is sad and funny. I cannot judge someone else’s religious beliefs.
Some people revere a man nailed to a cross, some people revere deities with multiple arms and some people revere overfed slaughtered pigs.
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