Free-range pigs, according to our wildlife and food quality experts, are unfit to eat because they carry diseases. But do they?
Over the last 30 years, the two largest processors of wild pigs in Texas have slaughtered and tested tens of thousands of animals. They have never found a diseased pig (don’t confuse worms with diseases.) US factory pig farms, on the other hand, are breeding grounds for pig and human epidemics.
Wildlife “management” which increasingly attacks biodiversity with poisons and guns is the worst thing that ever happened to wildlife and habitats.The latest feral pig control plan being promoted in the article appearing below, is a costly and reckless Texas Parks & Wildlife Department poisoning project that will harm wildlife in incalculable ways.
As an alternative to large-scale toxin distribution, we could round up these pigs and sell them to the meatpackers just like we did until Big Agriculture made this practice illegal, which had the added “benefit” of reducing competition for the big processing companies by enacting regulations that put the small, independent processors and small abattoirs out of business. Free-range Texas pork is readily accepted in Europe, which has higher food purity standards than the US. Putting this same organic, free-range wild pork back into our grocery stores would kill three birds with one stone: the wild pig ‘problem’ would turn into an income opportunity for landowners, the public would have a less-expensive, nutritious, tasty, disease-free source of true free-range pork, and we could stop raising pigs in a process that is so filthy, cruel and disgusting as to be unfit for discussion in polite company.
Who opposes rounding up wild pigs for sale into our food system? The confinement pork producers—who are now dominated by the Chinese—and their cronies, including our “pure” food and wildlife protectors, for whom the feral pig problem is a wonderful source of pork (the pun is intended).
NOTE: This PDF was written for Borderland News, a feature of Texas Wildlife Association.