Photo by doveimaging.com
***UPDATE***6.00pm
An alert about an article in Tranungkite received via email:
Saya kebetulan tahu benar tentang projek yang dimaksudkan oleh YB Teresa Kok dan YAB Menteri Besar Selangor. Ini kerana projek ini ditawarkan oleh syarikat kawan baik saya beberapa bulan yang lepas.
Untuk makluman RTM, projek ini diluluskan oleh kerajaan Khir Toyo 2 minggu sebelum pembubaran parlimen. Walaupun saya orang kuat PAS, saya menyetujui projek yang dicadangkan oleh rakan saya ini kerana selepas menelitinya secara terperinci, saya dapati ia amat berguna di dalam menyelesaikan kemelut yang dihadapi oleh umat Islam yakni isu pencemaran air.
Projek berteknologikan Jerman ini adalah satu sistem ternakan babi moden dan tertutup (closed system). Ini bermakna babi akan dipelihara di dalam tempat tertutup (lengkap dengan pendingin hawa) dan segala najis yang tercerna akan dikitar untuk pengeluaran gas (methane). Malah darah babi apabila disembelih pun akan menjadi sebahagian daripada kitaran ini.
Lantas tidak akan wujud lagi sebarang pencemaran (zero-pollution) akibat ternakan babi selepas ini. Pihak Jabatan Haiwan dan juga pegawai-pegawai kerajaan lain telah membuat kajian mendalam mengenai kesesuaian projek ini termasuk membuat lawatan ke Jerman untuk melihat sendiri bagaimana keberkesanannya. Mereka begitu kagum dengan apa yang mereka lihat dan bersetuju melaksanakannya di Selangor, dan jika berjaya akan dikembangkan pula ke seluruh negara.
Seperkara lagi perlu disebutkan bahawa usaha ini adalah di bawah pembiayaan swasta. Kerajaan negeri hanya menyediakan tapak projek. Orang-orang bukan Islam perlukan daging babi sementara kita perlukan air yang bersih dan persekitaran yang nyaman. Bukankah projek ini satu kompromi yang amat hebat untuk rakyat negara ini?
***UPDATE***3.50PM
PIG/PORK-RELATED DISEASES
From New York Times:
As a result, Dr. Lynfield said the investigators had begun leaning toward a seemingly bizarre theory: that exposure to the hog brain itself might have touched off an intense reaction by the immune system, something akin to a giant, out-of-control allergic reaction. Some people might be more susceptible than others, perhaps because of their genetic makeup or their past exposures to animal tissue. The aerosolized brain matter might have been inhaled or swallowed, or might have entered through the eyes, the mucous membranes of the nose or mouth, or breaks in the skin.
From CBC News:
China’s Ministry of Health has confirmed an illness that has killed at least 19 people involves bacteria that had spread among pigs.
All pork exports from the southwestern province of Sichuan have been suspended.
The disease has proved so deadly that more than a quarter of the 67 pigs confirmed to have it in the province have died.
The ministry’s website says, “Experts have initially diagnosed that the disease is caused by streptococcus suis bacteria infection.” It says the human infection occurred during the slaughtering or processing of infected pigs.
***UPDATE***2.55PM
From CBS:
(CBS) Tobacco, once the number-one crop in North Carolina, has now been replaced by something that’s causing the state an even bigger headache: hogs. Right now in North Carolina, there are more pigs than people.
Correspondent Morley Safer first reported on this story from North Carolina in 1996. Now, seven years later, nothing seems to have changed.
In fact, it appears to be worse, and new studies reported a few weeks ago by The New York Times indicate that there might be very serious health problems for people living close to the fumes from hog waste - a big problem for a state that right now has more pigs than people.
JY: Look, I don’t wanna live near a pig farm. So I can eat less pork if it means having cleaner air to breathe and less deadly diseases.
***UPDATE***2.43PM
From Rolling Stone:
A lot of pig shit is one thing; a lot of highly toxic pig shit is another. The excrement of Smithfield hogs is hardly even pig shit: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure. The reason it is so toxic is Smithfield’s efficiency. The company produces 6 billion pounds of packaged pork each year. That’s a remarkable achievement, a prolificacy unimagined only two decades ago, and the only way to do it is to raise pigs in astonishing, unprecedented concentrations.
Smithfield Foods, the largest and most profitable pork processor in the world, killed 27 million hogs last year. That’s a number worth considering. A slaughter-weight hog is fifty percent heavier than a person. The logistical challenge of processing that many pigs each year is roughly equivalent to butchering and boxing the entire human populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Austin, Memphis, Baltimore, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Milwaukee, Seattle, Boston, Denver, Louisville, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Las Vegas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Tucson.
Smithfield Foods actually faces a more difficult task than transmogrifying the populations of America’s thirty-two largest cities into edible packages of meat. Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. The best estimates put Smithfield’s total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround the company’s slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount.
Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do — even if it came marginally close to that standard — it would lose money. So many of its contractors allow great volumes of waste to run out of their slope-floored barns and sit blithely in the open, untreated, where the elements break it down and gravity pulls it into groundwater and river systems. Although the company proclaims a culture of environmental responsibility, ostentatious pollution is a linchpin of Smithfield’s business model.
***UPDATE***1.49PM
I suggest Teresa, the lover of piggies and pork, lives next to a pig farm for one month. And see what she says after that. Why doesn’t she rear some piggy pets? Why doesn’t she have any non-Chinese full-time staff? Or does she? Is she a Malaysian leader?
ORIGINAL POST
Sometimes when people say DAP is a narrow Chinese party, I agree. Especially after Teresa Kok announced with great pride that a RM100mil ‘modern’ pig farm has been approved.
I think this kinda bak kut teh posturing is very childish and doesn’t take into account the feelings of Muslims. To most Muslims, pigs are really quite offensive.
I feel the new government should be a bit more sensitive in dealing with such issues to prevent one-upmanship as in “yay, the Chinese can eat more pork now”.
It’s well-known that pig farms are dirty and pollute the environment. They are also very profitable. Malacca, under Ali Rustam (BN-UMNO), probably has the most farms per square km, if I am not wrong.
My suggested solutions:
1. Move pig farms out of developed states to countries like Vietnam.
2. Farms should be more environmentally friendly and hygienic.
3. No need to glorify such a stupid approval. I believe Malaysians are more concerned about accountability, transparency, a better economy, etc.
4. Teresa should hire a PR agent, if she is serious about being a Malaysian leader. Btw, why are all her assistants Chinese? Please let me know if she has any non-Chinese full-time staff.
Read Khir Toyo’s response at his blog.
I say again, I find this piggy politics very childish. Dietary concerns are probably the last thing on the rakyat’s minds.
Also, pork is among the dirtiest of meats. Disease-ridden and smelly unless properly treated and cooked, we should probably ban the meat in the name of healthier living.
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