A visit to a local modern pig breeding enterprise in Eastern China.
In the past years, I have been able to visit this kind of enterprise and also visit the piggery. These two years, because of the African swine fever, the hogs are very expensive, and the disinfection measures have increased by several orders of magnitude compared to previous years. If you want to enter the factory, you have to complete three layers of disinfection in half a day, plus several hours of isolation in a dark room for observation, before you can get the valuable opportunity to visit.
In order to reduce the workload of the delegation, the company arranged a visit to the production command center. The company has launched a real-time monitoring system in the past two years, and although it is costly, it has been effective. A hall, a door is a large screen, split screen is the inside and outside of each production base, all the situation at a glance. Several monitors sit in front of their computers, observing every move of the production sites in various cities throughout the province. Each pig is given a number, and cameras and sensors track all the details of the pig in real time. When the mouse clicks on a pig, the screen provides real-time feedback on the pig’s height, weight, body temperature, and feeding status. If a pig has an abnormality, such as an elevated body temperature or a prolonged lack of food, there is a real-time warning. When a batch of pigs is released, the original numbers are automatically cancelled.
The system has a PC client and a mobile version that can be accessed by anyone from the monitor to the owner with authorization. It is possible to observe the movement of each pig right in front of the computer or on the cell phone. The actions of all the breeders, cleaners, and veterinarians inside the plant, leaving no stone unturned. Every pig, from birth to cold meat, is under the loving and warm gaze of people.
Among the pigs in the farm, the more blessed are the adult boars, i.e., the breeding pigs. Each boar moves around in a separate room, eating constantly and saving energy. The main activities of the boars are eating, sleeping and breeding. At first, I heard that one adult boar is responsible for more than one hundred sows, which is a frightening number, equivalent to saying that a boar in a pig farm is twice as physically demanding as in the Four Seasons Hotel. Later, it was explained that modern farming does not require boars to be personally involved, and that as long as the blood of boars is collected manually and regularly, more than one hundred sows can be bred. The unused blood veins will be kept in the refrigerator to be used as an aphrodisiac for the next time when the sows are not in harmony. After hearing that, I felt relieved for the boar, but I also felt unworthy for him.
Compared to the adult boars, the adult sows are treated much worse. The sows are locked in a sow pen, with a distance of about 20 to 30 centimeters between the front and the back, and with steel bars on all sides. The sows’ daily lives consist of eating, sleeping, and receiving artificial insemination, and pregnant sows have little room to turn around or lie down to sleep. Sows give birth to approximately 10-15 piglets in a single gestation, and are weaned after 2-4 weeks of lactation. After weaning, the piglets are sent to a meat plant to be fattened up for slaughter, and the sow begins the next gestation period. Usually this cycle happens 5-10 times in a sow’s life. After fertility is reduced, the sows are also sent to the slaughterhouse.
Right next to the sow pen is the piglet pen. The newborn litter sits in rows, humping its mother’s milk. The piglets are new to the world, some of them are not quite open, and some are simply still asleep. Some piglets are different, they are very active in milk arching, arching away from the pig next to them, sucking a few mouths, and looking up at the camera from time to time, they are very expressive. My colleagues were very happy when they saw this piglet, saying that this piglet was so domineering that no other piglets could eat it.
The person who led us on the tour said: “This pig is the same. Some pigs are very strong, and have been so since birth. You can see that pigs with sharp beaks usually belong to this kind of strong pigs; some pigs are lazy, look very Buddhist, and don’t compete with other pigs, anyway, they know there will always be food for them, and they are not in a hurry.
When I heard that, I laughed and said, “So there are strong pigs and Buddhist pigs, but what’s the difference? It can’t be said that the pig that becomes braised pork has more achievements in its life than the pig that becomes ham hock. When I finished, everyone in the control room laughed.
Afterwards, I myself couldn’t be happier, as if I had witnessed countless condensed lives.
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