Agricultural History Review, Volume 62 Part 2 (2014), p. 369

Admiration, pity, fear, fascination, disgust, love: humans have a complicated relationship with most other animals, and pigs are no exception. It is presumably this complexity that has prompted Reaktion Books into commissioning their animal series to examine the historical role of animals and their significance in the worlds of trade and imagination, art and science. It is, they claim, ‘a new kind of animal history’. The series now has over 60 titles from albatross to wolf, including chickens and ducks, discussed in 2012 in this Review, and pigs, the title under review here.

Brett Mizelle has assembled a wonderful collection of pig images, from Greek vases and Roman statues, through medieval manuscript illustrations to film and television stills, to illustrate his book. He begins with an account of the wild boar and its domestication, speculating on whether, given the behaviour of wild pigs, it was a treaty between consenting parties in their mutual self-interest. He goes on to examine the interactions between pigs and people throughout history, touching on classical myths, medieval pig executions, and the different attitudes to pigs of Moslems and Jews on the one hand and Christians on the other. One of the constant themes of the book is the tension between the small scale and the industrial scale, both in pig rearing and in pigmeat processing. The chapter on the pig in the Americas contrasts the slaughter industries of Cincinnati and Chicago with home-killing traditions in the southern states of the USA, and much of the chapter on the modern pigmeat industry is set there too, comparing traditionally raised pigs favourably with the intensively farmed product. The remaining half of the book is concerned with what pigs do apart from providing something to eat. They hunt truffles and work as entertainers. In Australia there are pig races. There are now more Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs in the USA than in Vietnam since they became popular as pets. Their genetic similarity to humans makes them useful as experimental animals and sources of transplant organs, but also means that they can be sources of medical problems. There is a fascinating chapter on the linguistic and metaphorical role of pigs, and another on pigs in art and literature, from the medieval Testamentum Porcelli to Miss Piggy on television. The final chapter is concerned with the problems caused by feral pigs.

Does this approach constitute a new kind of animal history? And if it does, is it an improvement on the old kind of animal history? Its exploration of mythology and religion, images and literature – the pig of the human imagination – enables the author to make a powerful case for what he calls our ‘occlusion of the real experiences of pigs’ as the pig industry has changed in the last 50 years to move from the cottage and mixed farm pig to the pig as a component in a vertically integrated meat production business. But the reader looking for a discussion of why these changes have occurred, for some analysis of the developments (in feed formulation, genetics, biosecurity, capital intensification, supply chain integration and market concentration) that have combined to produce them, might be better advised to follow up the extensive and varied references listed in the final 30 pages of the book.