News Flash: Eating Mutant ‘Low-Fat’ Piglets Won’t Make You Healthy
Okja becomes more real every day. Earlier this year, shocking photos from Cambodia showed a farm full of pigs who’d been bred to express “double-muscling,” leaving them with heaping knots of muscle mass on their backs. Now, outlets are reporting that Chinese scientists have genetically altered pig embryos (using added genes from mice) to create “skinny pigs” who have a lower percentage of body fat and could be used, one day, to produce what some headlines are calling “healthy bacon.”
Experimenters should stop investing in cruel “Frankenscience” and acknowledge that there’s no need for humanity to turn to eating mutated, lean mouse-pigs when bacon made from plants—which is already widely available and considerably less resource-intensive to produce than animal-derived food—contains zero cholesterol and doesn’t require living, feeling animals to become walking, breathing experiments.
Let Pigs Be Pigs
Pigs exist for their own purposes. They feel pain and experience fear in the same ways that the cats and dogs with whom we share our homes do. They’re sensitive, intelligent animals with unique personalities.
The news that experimenters are using twisted science to mutate pig flesh into something “safer” for human consumption should do one thing only: Serve as a wake-up call that makes people realize that there’s something amiss about using animals for food in the first place.
Whether they’re forced to grow giant muscles or burn up half their fat, all pigs value their lives and don’t want to die. If you wouldn’t eat a genetically altered pig, then it’s time to ask yourself why you’d eat a “normal” one. You can make a world of difference for pigs, the environment, and your own personal health by making a decision that’s TRULY better for everyone: Go vegan today. Don’t know where to get started? Don’t worry—we’ve got all the tools you’ll need to make the switch.
