Animal rights advocates have for almost two decades been calling for temples in Hakka villages to cease their “divine pig” competitions, which involve fattening up a pig to gargantuan proportions for a chance to win money.
The practice seems to be on its last legs, with only 11 out of about 1,600 temples still holding the annual competition, which took place on Tuesday last week. As usual, rights advocates continued to protest the issue, while the Hakka Affairs Council asked people to respect their traditional beliefs and culture.
However, thousands of festivals do not just disappear because of activism and concerns over animal welfare. The ritual is fading due to societal change, as fewer households raise pigs and young people move to cities for work. Several villages report not having enough divine pigs to claim all the prizes, and an increasing number of participants hire other people to fatten their pigs for them.
However negative, this spotlight on the competition due to animal abuse allegations can be an opportunity to shake things up and give the festival a new image.
Instead of calling for the abolition of more competitions when so few remain, advocates can focus on pushing for changes that will satisfy traditional and modern values.
However, first of all, the blatant animal abuse needs to end. People allegedly employ all sorts of abusive methods to force-feed the pigs, which are unable to move to even drink water or urinate.
Some claim that these “methods” are no longer used and that the pigs eat well and are cared for properly, but there is simply no way to humanely fatten up a pig to 1,000kg while maintaining some quality of life.
And this is not just a problem during the annual festival, as it takes several years to get the pigs to that size, meaning that visitors to the villages will see the animals lying there miserably in their pens.
With their rich and unique cultural traditions, these Hakka villages are charming places to visit, but as animal welfare awareness grows in Taiwan, more people will undoubtedly be put off by such a sight and leave with a negative impression.
The ritual remains important to these villages, not only spiritually, but because it also brings economic opportunities and provides a stage for other traditional Hakka arts and crafts to shine.
Many solutions have been suggested over the past few years, such as disqualifying pigs that cannot walk 10m and using other criteria aside from weight to judge the animals.
One participant last year constructed a divine pig with bags of rice and shared the rice with the villagers after the festival.
However, these suggestions do not provide much incentive for festival organizers, who already harbor bad feelings toward the animal rights advocates, whom they perceive as trying to destroy their traditions.
There has to be a better way to transform the festival in a creative, modern way that will give it a new image, attract new visitors and also bring more young people home to participate.
The negative press could be turned around for a feel-good story, one where the divine pigs still exist, but in a humane way that is also economically and spiritually viable.
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