"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. \nAcross 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? \nRomania 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. \nAlthough 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. \nFor 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. \nUnfortunately, 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. \nPigs 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. \nEither 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. \nThe 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. \nIndeed, 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. \nMoreover, 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? \nOur 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. \nThose 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. \nFortunately, 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. \nBecause 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. \nSo 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. \nAndrei Cornea is Professor of philosophy and classics at the University of Bucharest. Copyright: Project Syndicate
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
Ideas matter. They especially matter in world affairs. And in communist countries, it is communist ideas, not supreme leaders’ personality traits, that matter most. That is the reality in the People’s Republic of China. All Chinese communist leaders — from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) through Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), from Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) through to Xi Jinping (習近平) — have always held two key ideas to be sacred and self-evident: first, that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is infallible, and second, that the Marxist-Leninist socialist system of governance is superior to every alternative. The ideological consistency by all CCP leaders,
In the past 30 years, globalization has given way to an international division of labor, with developing countries focusing on export manufacturing, while developed countries in Europe and the US concentrate on internationalizing service industries to drive economic growth. The competitive advantages of these countries can readily be seen in the global financial market. For example, Taiwan has attracted a lot of global interest with its technology industry. The US is the home of leading digital service companies, such as Meta Platforms (Facebook), Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft. The country holds a virtual oligopoly of the global market for consumer digital
The US on Friday hosted the second Global COVID-19 Summit, with at least 98 countries, including Taiwan, and regional alliances such as the G7, the G20, the African Union and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) attending. Washington is also leading a proposal to revise one of the most important documents in global health security — the International Health Regulations (IHR) — which are to be discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) that starts on Sunday. These two actions highlight the US’ strategic move to dominate the global health agenda and return to the core of governance, with the WHA
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on Saturday expounded on her concept of replacing “unification” with China with “integration.” Lu does not she think the idea would be welcomed in its current form; rather, she wants to elicit discussion on a third way to break the current unification/independence impasse, especially given heightened concerns over China attacking Taiwan in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She has apparently formulated her ideas around the number “three.” First, she envisions cross-strait relations developing in three stages: having Beijing lay to rest the idea of unification of “one China” (一個中國); next replacing this with
RSS