June 1, 2010By Karen Coates
The Faster Times
This is the third story in a three-part series examining the lives and deaths of Asian pigs.
The squeal of a soon-dead pig is hard to stomach. It’s high and loud and long. The animal knows.
I hear the telltale shriek one evening in Phnom Dek, in the rural Cambodian province of Preah Vihear. We’re gathered at the front of a highway restaurant, sipping cold beer with a thick layer of sweat and dust caked atop our skin. It’s just before Chinese New Year, and a family has chosen its holiday pig. It’s a happy, gamboling little creature one minute; frightened and bound the next. Just a juvenile, about 2 ½ feet long.
I know what’s coming, just as the pig seems to sense it, too. But I want to see because I eat pig and I want to know, precisely, the origins of what I eat and the steps between animal and plate.
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