Pigs have long gotten a bad rap. The four-legged ungulates are considered so messy and stinky that they are synonymous with slovenliness: Eat too much and you are pigging out. Forget to clean up and your house is a pig pen. And when is a pig happiest?
That stigma is perhaps no greater than in New York City, where high-rises and apartments are hardly hospitable to pigs. The city’s health code forbids keeping them as pets, forcing pig owners to operate in secret — or boldly take the risk an unhappy neighbor might squeal.
“People think it’s weird and a novelty but they’re really sweet and really smart animals,” says Timm Chiusano, who keeps two potbellied pigs on the ground floor of his three-story brownstone in Brooklyn. “They can be fantastic pets.”
Chiusano, 35, moved to his current home after raising his pets from piglets in a condo high-rise, where a neighbor once raised a stink about them piddling in the lobby.
Now his difficulties are largely logistical. Though billed as “mini pigs” when he got them, five-year-old Cholula and Runtly now weigh in at 90kg and 31kg respectively.
He renovated his home with the pigs in mind, putting their beds and food on the first floor (their legs are too stubby to climb stairs) and installing special flooring that holds up to hooves. He is also constantly resodding his tiny backyard because the grass is essentially a salad bar for swine.
Queens resident Danielle Forgione is scrambling to sell her second-floor apartment after a neighbor complained about one-year-old Petey the pig to the co-op board. In November and December last year she was issued city animal violations and in January was told by both the city and her management office that she needed to get rid of the pig.
“He’s part of our family,” says Forgione, whose short and stocky pet weighs in at nearly 18kg, stands 0.38m tall, and measures 0.53m long, snout to tail. “This is our pet. He’s not harming anybody. He goes to the vet every six months, he gets his hooves clipped, he gets de-wormed, he gets his shots.”
Forgione, 33, purchased Petey as a therapeutic animal after losing her brother in a motorcycle accident last year. Also, one of her six children is allergic to dog hair, so Petey’s coarse, human-like hair is ideal.
“He sleeps in the same bed as my youngest,” she says, adding that Petey wears medium-sized clothes she buys from online dog-clothing stores. “And he’s not aggressive either.”
However, the city put its foot down and earlier this month denied her petition to amend the city’s health code to create an exception for “domesticated mini pigs.” She has exhausted her appeals and has until later this summer to remove Petey or authorities will do it for her.
City officials say pigs are a public health risk because they cannot be vaccinated for rabies and can become aggressive, especially during their first few years. Since 2008, there have been 89 illegal animal violations — but the violations database does not differentiate animals by type so there is no way to know how many of those violations were for pigs.
“Pigs are hard to police,” says Salvatore Pernice, a Staten Island veterinarian who recently flouted the health code to purchase his nine-month-old mini-pig Albert from a breeder in Texas for US$950.
He picked him up at Newark Airport and brought him back to his home where he is able to enjoy a backyard and gets along fine with Pernice’s other pets, a cat and two dogs.
“I do think it’s probably better to live in a place where they are able to root, graze and be a pig,” says Pernice, 50, who lives in a detached house with a large yard.
Exactly how many people own pigs in the city is unclear. However, many connect online, creating Facebook pages for their pigs and swapping photos.
One Brooklyn pig named Franklin is dressed up in New York Mets baseball gear and has more than 1,000 likes on his Facebook page.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of