Ethical pork and body bits as art

REUTERS

ETHICAL PORK: We've come a long way from days when people wanted to decorate their living rooms with animals' body parts.

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That Mike King has a lot to answer for.

Sure, he wasn't the first to highlight the plight of pigs in this country, and you've got to wonder how he represented the pork board for six years without learning that some pigs suffer miserable lives, but you can't deny that his stand has had an impact.

I can't remember an animal welfare story generating the same level of publicity, and I'm sure the pork industry can't, either. This proves two things: (1) Sometimes the unlikeliest of characters can be the most effectivemessengers; and (2) Occasionally, you need to be repeatedly hit over the head with information before it penetrates the skull.

I've been a pretty big hypocrite on the issue of pig farming since I met my Save Animals from Exploitation-supporting wife. At home, we're advocates of wild and free-range pork. The problem is that, when my wife is not around, I find it hard to resist the odd bit of pig that has quite possibly come from one of the farms we've seen so much of lately. It could be at the centre of a tasty-looking wonton, a classic toasted sandwich filling or the most delicious ingredient in a bowl of spaghetti.

For years, I've justified this double standard by telling myself that I'm doing my bit for the cause at home, the pig is already dead, and that not eating the wonton isn't going to change that. This duplicity served me well until I saw King with all those sad-looking sows in crates.

This assault on my ethical indiscretions has been compounded by a recent interview I did on Fresh FM with the Suter's curator, Anna Marie White. She put together the Creature Discomforts Decorating With Death exhibition currently showing at the gallery. It features everything from a polar bear skin with the head still attached and a decapitated fawn to a stool made from an elephant's foot.

The comments in the visitors' book range from "Disturbing, fascinating, distressing, provocative, beautiful it's pulled my emotions all over the place" to "F...ing sick".

Anna told me the exhibition was about making people think. "We are all complicit. Not one person who walks into that room can turn around and say, `I have nothing to do with it'," she said.

She went on to say that her partner is an ethically minded vegetarian, but even he finds it hard.

"He tries to buy shoes that don't have leather in them, and if they don't have leather in them, they've got plastic in them and he's contributing to the oil industry. Even though you try really hard to have good clean ethics, it's nearly impossible."

I get where Anna is coming from, but I still think it pays to try, and I'm encouraged by the fact that more New Zealanders than ever are concerned about animal welfare.

Forty years ago, most people didn't think there was anything particularly special about orang-utans or whales. Thirty years ago, hardly anyone cared about the treatment of circus or zoo animals. Twenty years ago, no one thought there was anything wrong with docking dogs' tails or slicing off sharks' fins. And 10 years ago, you would have had a hard time finding organic eggs and free-range chicken in the supermarket.

Anna is right when she says "we are all complicit", but there are degrees of complicity, and I reckon the lower, the better.

Besides, the fact that Safe can set a large chunk of the national news agenda for a fortnight tells you something about how far we've come from the days when regular folk wanted to decorate their sitting rooms with animals' body parts.

The interview finished with Anna saying: "If the meatworks were transparent, everyone would be a vegetarian." In response, I said: "Yes, but if God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?" We both laughed, but only one of us was left feeling uneasy.

- © Fairfax NZ News