‘Lesser Beasts’ the definitive tome on pigs

Basic Books

$27.50, 320 pages

In his splendid “Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig,” Mark Essig surveys the 10,000 year partnership of man and pig, a tumultuous affair full of accusation, fire and litigation. Pigs dined freely in the woods before the invention of agriculture in the New Stone Age. Then, with the rise of cities in the Near East around 3,500 BC, they “moved into town,” became adept at “urban scavenging” and, eventually, “domesticated themselves.”

Essig describes the pig as a “dietary generalist,” an omnivore who will eat most anything, including human waste. Over millennia, this trait has brought upon the species torrential abuse and contributed in large part to religious prohibitions against eating pork. The author says, “People came to despise the pig for doing precisely the job it had evolved to do.”

Romans, high and low, were so devoted to pork that their rulers passed “sumptuary laws” to restrict overconsumption during feasting. The ungulate assumed a revered place in Norse mythology and Arthurian folk romance. In legend, the Briton chieftain once fought an insane running battle with an elephantine mythical boar.In medieval times, pigs could be charged with murder and hung, but they also signified status for noble classes who made pork their preferred food.

Pigs became avatars of empire during the European conquest of the New World. It was from the Taíno people of the Caribbean, first encountered by Columbus, that the word barbecue is derived, as well as the method of its preparation. De Soto and his clanking band skirmished around the pre-colonial Southeast accompanied by a small herd of pigs, which had “superb early warning capability,” according to historian Charles M. Hudson.

For their part, Native Americans disliked the Old World animal, with good reason: They “helped destroy the Indian’s way of life,” running roughshod over crops and gobbling up oyster beds. In time, the Indians made a practical accommodation, finding uses for their fatty oils and hides.

“Piney woods rooters” were crucial in the settling of the American West, having reached the Pacific Coast by 1830. The Corn Belt, stretching from Ohio to Iowa, became a circular system in which corn-fed pigs became meat, which then became money to reinvest into more land and corn. Five-hundred-mile “pig drives” across the Appalachians were not uncommon. At one point, Cincinnati, with its proliferation of slaughterhouses, was named “Porkopolis.”

Pigs were caught in the crossfire of class warfare later in the 19th century, when their presence on the congested streets of New York and London annoyed the era’s emerging middle class. To the wealthy, “both the poor and their pigs bred quickly, lived in filth, and threatened the social order.” Public health measures removed swine from cities, creating additional hardship for the urban poor, who depended on them for survival and sanitation, as they had for hundreds of decades.

Mark Essig’s crisp humor, which makes even the lowly pig’s tale a pleasure to read, should be evident from the title of his first book, “Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death.” He carries himself as a man of learning, a rigorous historian whose graceful prose has the continental bearing of, say, “The Swerve,” Stephen Greenblatt’s award-winning account concerning Lucretius, the Epicurean poet. Lucretius believed a contract between livestock and humans was necessary, a civilized arrangement that anticipated by 2,000 years the Animal Bill of Rights, which Essig cites with approval near the close of “Lesser Beasts.”

And why shouldn’t he, given the sickening conditions of the “modern” meat industry? Essig’s historical account takes a much darker turn as “centralized pork-packing operations” materialize in the 19th century. In response to the horrifying conditions of these abattoirs, the muckraker Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle,” a thinly disguised piece of depth charge journalism that motivated both the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, which were passed shortly after the novel’s 1906 publication. Neither law slowed the development of intensive farming in the 20th century.

“Cruelty,” writes Essig, “was built into the system.”

Force-fed antibiotics and hormones, pigs were bulked up like professional wrestlers. They were crammed together in “hog confinement buildings” that, by the 1990s, resembled death camps. Essig reports, “one plant in North Carolina killed 8 million pigs annually.” For swine, it was an atrocity exhibition decorated with psychological damage and chronic infections; for the human population, the absence of environmental oversight “destroyed small farms, fouled land and water, and threatened public health.”

Considering corporate America’s hostility to government regulation, Essig believes that industry reforms will come only through market forces; when people finally demand higher quality and more humanely raised meat, “the price gap between Sam’s Club pork and farmer’s market pork will narrow.” Despite the rising caste of televised chefs, who, “like those of ancient Rome, love pork,” the “virtuous carnivore” who treasures his or her “niche meat” remains a small group of buyers. And then there’s the perennial question: When things get just right for the rich, where and what will the working class eat?

Of course, there’s always the sensible vegetarian option, but, for consumers who choose otherwise, there’s an additional concern: “The brain inside the pig.” Pigs are highly intelligent creatures that can learn to perform tasks faster than most other animals. “In fact,” Essig wonders, “if you gave them a few lessons and a specially designed steering wheel, I wouldn’t be surprised if pigs could drive.”