When Pigs Fly

Sometimes you feel like a duck, sometimes you don't. Almond Joy's got ducks, but Mounds don't...

No, wait... that’s not right.

Have you ever heard something that you immediately knew did not sound right? I mean, even before your mind had a chance to unravel what you had just heard, did the little voice in your head shout, “Hey... something’s nuts here!”

As is often my habit, I was sitting here patiently attempting to unknot a 12-pound bundle that resembles the fur ball a large cat coughed up, which is actually the result of rarely checking my mailbox more than twice each month. And since the first 30 minutes of this task is mostly mindless, I was indirectly listening to the Nightly News as I tried to match the ripped, shredded envelopes with their original contents that had arrived by curbside delivery to be unceremoniously slaughtered, wadded and crammed into a two gallon box already filled with 3 gallons of content.

So anyway, I am quietly mumbling some Aboriginal curse to bestow on my Postal-person’s favorite rose bush for wasting my time with this clutter when I hear Mr. Anchor-dude mention that scientists have figured out how to breed cloned pigs to have high omega-3 fatty acids with the intention of producing heart-healthy bacon.

“Huh!?… Something’s nuts here!”

Is this really something we think we need? If we could get past the whole controversy of cloning animals for the purpose of eating, and if we could get past the “yuck factor” that it is a gene from the roundworm (known for their ability to produce omega-3) that Harvard geneticists mixed with the swine, we still have to come back to the basic question that asks: Do we really need this?

Even the geneticists admit that there is no reduction in bad fat content in the resulting bacon. So apparently, the bacon will still make you fat, but now you can argue that you are healthier for it. This reminds me of the days when they first started putting salad bars in restaurants where the patrons had their freedom of building their own salads. How many times have you witnessed a customer (who has every outward indication of *needing* to be bellied up to the salad bar) get to the end of the table after having finely tuned the ratios of weight-wise veggies and heart-healthy legumes, only to top the platter with 17 hearty scoops of Thousand Island or Ranch dressing, most certainly rationalizing their wise lunch selection as low calorie because there was something green underneath.

To me, this news just flies in the face of logic. It just never ceases to amaze me the depths of which humans will delve for the chance to thumb our nose at Mother Nature. Already, we have genetically engineered fruit and vegetables that will survive Armageddon with nary a bruise. This stuff looks so perfect that it is hard to tell from the wax stuff. And I find it a bit unnerving that even the bugs and molds don’t want it. Sure, it looks great, but there is zero nutrition value... zip, nadda, zilch.

So, now we are being introduced to “healthy pigs” (is that an oxymoron?). This is an experiment on not just the pigs, but also the humans that may eventually consume them. Exactly how long did it take to learn that feeding a cow the pulverized remnants of his ancestors will propagate the, so-called, Mad Cow condition, and that this will also be passed to humans? I don’t imagine anyone predicted that. And I just can’t help but wonder how many years from now will we learn about some formerly unforeseen disease that has been unleashed because of this type of tampering with our food supply, in this case cloning a pig with a roundworm under the guise of health.

I’m thinking for my money, if I want bacon, I will just fry up the real stuff and pop a handful of Essential Fatty Acid supplement capsules. And I didn’t have to clone anything.

But after hearing about this subject, I suspect it will be some time before I can even consider eating anything from pork...

Because... sometimes you feel like a duck, and sometimes you don’t.