Eideard

Here in pig country, the pigs are vanishing.

This month, 150 pigs — each one weighing more than an average grown man — disappeared from a farm building in Lafayette despite deadbolts on its doors. Farther north near Lake Lillian, 594 snorting, squealing hogs disappeared last month, whisked away in the dark.

And in Iowa, with added cover from the vast stretches of tall cornfields, pigs have been snatched, 20 or 30 at a time, from as many as eight facilities in the last few weeks, said the sheriff of Mitchell County, adding that among other challenges, the missing are difficult to single out.

“They all look alike,” said Curt Younker, the sheriff, who said he had only rarely heard of pig thefts in his decades on the job. “Suddenly we’re plagued with them.”

Some livestock economists pointed to the thefts in this hog-rich region as…a reflection of record-high prices for hogs this year and the ease of stealing pigs from the large barns that are often far from the farmer’s house.

“This is the hot commodity of the moment, like copper…and gold,” said Ryan Bode, whose family company, Rebco Pork, discovered that 150 of its pigs were missing on Sept. 16, shortly before they were to be taken to market…

Mr. Bode seemed doubtful about seeing his pigs again. “My guess is that they’re bacon and pork chops already…”

Investigators suspect that the pigs may have been taken to meat-processing plants or affiliated “drop-off” facilities or that they were sold at auction barns, which are less common these days as more large pig producers have direct arrangements with food-packing companies.

But that has raised an uncomfortable suggestion in an industry where many of the biggest farmers and pork buyers know one another personally and where a stranger pulling up to sell 100 hogs should give pause.

“Someone in the business somewhere has the answer as to who’s doing this,” said Sheriff Marc Chadderdon.

RTFA. Crime stories are a magnet for me. Not only catching the thieves; but, how the thieves pulled off the job.

Some of the article is hogwash. It’s absurd for an informed journalist to blame the lousy economy for the thefts – though she tries to. It’s the skyrocketing value of the pigs that motivates these crooks. Easy access to something worth stealing – and someone ready to buy.

For the first time since the dioxin scandal broke out in Germany, the toxin has been found in pigs. EU officials have confirmed that the animal feed was also exported to France and Denmark.

German authorities have detected high levels of the toxic chemical dioxin in pork from a farm banned from selling since last week’s scare, the Consumer Protection Ministry in the state of Lower Saxony said Tuesday.

“A test on the meat has shown high levels of dioxin content,” a ministry spokesman told the news agency AFP.

One animal had been slaughtered for testing purposes and found to be over the limit. Hundreds of pigs on the farm were then culled…

The northern German farm was one of those supplied with animal feed containing ingredients made by a firm suspected of knowingly selling some 3,000 tons of fatty acids meant only for industrial use. Samples of the fat contained more than 70 times the approved amount of dioxin.

The scandal broke last week when German investigators found excessive levels of dioxin in eggs and then some chickens. Authorities then froze sales of poultry, pork and eggs from thousands of farms…

The government has said so far that there is no immediate risk to public health. German officials say the dioxin levels pose no risk to humans if they only eat small amounts of the tainted food, but add that the contamination must be stamped out to avert serious long-term risks…

“The damage that has been caused is immense, not only financially but also when it comes to consumer trust … This is a scandal, as consumers who expect safe food were duped,” German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said on Monday.

Minister Aigner said, “This incident must and will have consequences” – and I certainly hope so. Traditions of food purity are older and most would think more deeply ingrained in the commerce and culture of Europe than in much of the rest of the world.

Maybe much less so than we assumed.

A French woman had to be rescued by helicopter after she got stuck in a tree where she took refuge from a herd of wild pigs she encountered while strolling in a valley.

The 30-year-old was walking near the southwestern town of Bagneres-de-Luchon on Monday when she took fright after seeing the boars and climbed up a nearby tree.

When she later tried to climb down she fell six feet and got stuck in branches from where she called rescue services with her GPS-equipped mobile phone and was able to give them her exact location, police said.

When rescue workers arrived they decided they would need a helicopter to extricate her safely from the tree and summoned one from a nearby base.

“She was shivering and suffering slightly from hypothermia” but had no broken bones or other injuries, said a rescue worker.

Fearless little buggers!

Police in Masaka, Uganda, have arrested two nuns for allegedly participating in growing marijuana.

The two nuns, who had declined to reveal their identities to the Police, were picked from Bwanda Convent in Masaka district, where the Police found a banana plantation full of the illegal crop…

However, there was a scuffle when Sister Nanteza attacked the Police, accusing them of entering the convent without permission.

“You bypassed us without saying anything. What if you got a problem here, whose fault would it be?” Sister Nanteza asked Byaruhanga and other Police officers.

The officers said they were fully armed and expected less resistance from the religious women…

Sister Rita told Byaruhanga that the marijuana was not for sale, but for treating farm animals, particularly pigs.

Pork – the other, uh…I forget.

When an American woman recently traveled to Jerusalem, she was allegedly questioned by border security guards about content on her MacBook. Lily Sussman said her computer was confiscated, and returned to her with three bullet holes in it.

She documented the experience and provided photos on her personal blog. Although the MacBook was completely destroyed, Sussman said she was able to remove her hard drive intact and retrieve all of her personal data.

She said she was provided with a form that included phone numbers and addresses of Israeli government officials that might help her get a replacement for her destroyed laptop. Officials she reached said she could expect compensation deliverable only to an Israeli bank account within a month.

If the nutballs ever succeed in gaining complete control of the United States…this is the way Dick Cheney would run the TSA.

Three pigs on exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair’s swine barn this year may have had H1N1…potentially marking the first time that the pandemic flu has been found in U.S. hogs.

It’s not clear what became of the pigs — they may have been slaughtered after the fair and sent into the food chain — but health officials downplayed any dangers from the sick pigs.

“This is a people virus,” said Jeff Bender, co-director of the University of Minnesota Center for Animal Health and Food Safety. “A person cannot get flu from eating pork, or pork products.”

Still, the timing couldn’t be worse for the pork industry, which has struggled this year to make a profit. As news broke Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were conducting tests, the National Pork Producers issued an e-mail reiterating that pork is safe to eat…

The suspect pigs were discovered by researchers carrying out a CDC project studying the spread of flu viruses at places where people and pigs come into close contact — such as state fairs. The pigs, from three separate farms, appeared healthy at the time samples were taken, but preliminary tests at the U of M this week found evidence that they might have had H1N1.

I’ll let my wife know that pork prices should be coming down before we go grocery shopping next weekend.

Just about every political decision in this story requires stupidity.

It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president…

But the crisis should not have come as a surprise.

When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.

The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba…

What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world’s most populous nation.

It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials.

“The main problem in Egypt is follow-up,” said Sabir Abdel Aziz Galal, chief of the infectious disease department at the Ministry of Agriculture. “A decision is taken, there is follow-up for a period of time, but after that, they get busy with something else and forget about it. This is the case with everything.”

The reasons for decisions like this are as phony as the excuses. I doubt if the pigs would have been slaughtered the way they were – if they were owned by Arabs. But, since custom only allowed Christians to raise swine, it was easy as pie to get the Ehyptian public to agree with the decision.

Foolishness in every corridor of government.

How can we produce pigs that provide us with healthy and yet good tasting meat?

Meat eating quality and healthiness are closely related to the amount and type of fat. During the last decade there has been extensive selection towards leaner genotypes which has resulted in reduction of not only undesirable subcutaneous fat, but also in a dramatic decrease in desirable intramuscular fat (commonly known as “marbling” fat). Intramuscular fat has the key input in meat tenderness and juiciness and a low level of intramuscular fat is associated with dry and unpalatable pork. The challenge which the pig producing industry is facing now is how to increase intramuscular fat without increasing subcutaneous fat?

A project which has recently started at the Institute of Biosensing Technology in collaboration with the Centre for Research in Biomedicine at the University of the West of England (UWE) aims to identify the genes controlling subcutaneous and intramuscular fat deposition. The end-aim of this work is to provide data which could form a basis for developing a genetic test for intramuscular fat and which could assist pig breeders in genetic selection…

Duncan Marriott explains, “Pigs need to be leaner to produce healthy meat but to carry sufficient intramuscular fat to maintain good eating quality. The project will be conducted on a number of commercial pig breeds, which differ in intramuscular fat content. My challenge is to identify the genes controlling both the intramuscular and subcutaneous fat content in different breeds.”

I hope the studies are not only successful – which seems reasonable – but, that industry types pay attention to the requirement for flavor.

Cripes, I prepared some barbecued ribless pork ribs yesterday that were as good as they could be – which means the portions which had marbling fat were tasty and tender. The lean bits I ended up cutting off the servings and I’ll be simmering them in a tomato sauce this afternoon to be served with mushrooms and pasta. Especially disappointing when I take the trouble and expense to get organic or natural meat for meals.