Thu, Dec 25, 2003 page9

• EU pig policy forces tough choice on Romania

  Brussels seems more concerned with humane slaughter of pigs than treatment of citizens

  • By Andrei Cornea
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  "We must see to it that the pig -- this animal that we, the Romanian nation, cannot afford to live without -- is not wiped out." So a socialist deputy in Romania's Parliament exclaimed in panic a few weeks ago. "Within a year, 4.5 million pigs will be killed, but chickens will still enter the European Union before we do," chirped the president of Romania's Pig Breeders Association.

  Across Romania, fear is growing of a looming porcine genocide as the country prepares to negotiate its way into the EU. For the fact is that most pigs are bred and slaughtered here in a way that fails to meet EU standards, and no one is prepared to invest the money needed to get our piggeries up to Union levels. But will our beloved pig be permitted to put the supreme national interest in jeopardy?

  

  ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA

  Romania is due to end its membership negotiations with the EU in 2004. Of course, we have lots of problems that the EU wants to see resolved: unfettered corruption, poor public administration, a justice system that makes a mockery of impartiality, and an economy which, despite some progress, has not yet been declared a "functioning market" by the European Commission. But it is agriculture, and in particular the Romanian pig, that is causing the severest headaches in Bucharest and in Brussels.

  Although Romania is just a few hundred miles away from the EU countries, it is a few centuries away in terms of agriculture. Some 40 percent of our population lives in rural areas, with 80 percent of the land divided into small lots.

  For centuries Romanian farmers have bred a few pigs each year, out of which the biggest are slaughtered just before Christmas, on St. Ignatius' Day. It is an almost pagan sacrifice: in the farm's backyard the animal is held down by a pair of strong men, the pig squealing as much as it can. Suddenly, a third man cuts the pig's throat, a fountain of blood sprinkling everyone. Then the carcass is singed on a fire and cut into pieces according to the different cuts of meat. People dance around, drink heavily, and prepare for a monstrous feast.

  Unfortunately, in terms of the European Commission, nothing is less "European" than this porcine hecatomb. In fact, EU regulations demand that pigs be raised and killed as humanely as possible, in order to make them suffer as little as possible.

  Pigs should be vaccinated, given anesthesia, provided even with the chance of a merciful euthanasia. Better yet, the pig should die in his sleep, finished off peacefully by trained executioners. Everything should be supervised by vets. Otherwise, you are infringing EU regulations and are guilty of exercising "unnecessary cruelty" upon animals.

  Either Romania, as an EU applicant, complies with these regulations or it must abandon pig breeding on a familiar scale and, as a consequence, increase the share of pork importation. Unless breeders adapt to the new, coming European era, Romanian pigs, at least those bred on thousands and thousands of small farms scattered across the countryside, seem doomed.

  The problem is that, in Romania, we have a hard enough time comprehending and protecting human rights, let alone animal rights. Veterinarians are few, but our human health services are in ruin as well.

  Indeed, most people cannot afford proper medication, and hospitals suffer from gross under-funding. So it seems to most Romanians not only preposterous, but immoral, for the EU to care so much for a pig's last moments of life when it seems to care so little for the everyday life of ordinary Romanians.

  Moreover, how is our government supposed to get millions of farmers to give up their barbaric ancestral habit? By trying to coerce them with fines? In America, I am told, a slang word for the police is "pigs." Are we to have pig police here?

  Our ruling social democratic party has its stronghold in Romania's rural areas. If Romania's peasants come to believe that the EU insists that they hug their pigs, not butcher them with knives, their fidelity towards the social democrats will wither.

  Those lost votes, however, won't go to responsible center-right parties, but to the fiercely nationalistic, anti-European, Greater Romania Party, perhaps the closest thing Europe now has to a fascist party. This is a nightmare that both European and mainstream Romanian politicians want to avoid.

  Fortunately, there seems to be a way to conciliate both EU bureaucrats and even our most diehard peasants. Our ugly pre-Christmas ritual butchery can be christened a "traditional, folk custom," a sacred rite deeply embedded in the fabric of Romanian nationhood. The proximity of Christmas will provide the ritual with a religious patina.

  Because national, religious, and folk traditions are supposed to be protected across the Union, our unsavory habit of slaughtering squealing pigs can be preserved even as Romania enters the EU. The sad fate of our porcine population will not be frowned upon as primitive and anti-European, but will be condoned as a venerable national tradition, preserved in accordance with the best European standards.

  So our Romanian pig may survive after all -- at least until the next St. Ignatius' Day -- thanks to multi-culturalism. But perhaps before we Romanians are asked to establish animal rights, we should told to pay more attention to ensuring respect for our own.

  Andrei Cornea is Professor of philosophy and classics at the University of Bucharest. Copyright: Project Syndicate
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