Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/546/en

The Domestic Pig

Comparable only to the high-performance breeds of chicken, the pig has been reshaped through the methods of modern breeding, feeding and keeping — away from its original way of life and the diversity of breed types — into uniform production breeds. Once predominantly a pasture animal that shaped the landscape, tended by herdsmen, then, through crossbreeding in eighteenth-century England with Asian and southern European breeds, brought to higher growth performance, and in the nineteenth century as the improved landrace integrated across farming operations with outdoor access — today, beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, it is being lifted out of the living context of the farm whole and produced in factory-style mass keeping. The aim of modern breeding was and remains: away from lard — toward the uniform hybrid, the early-maturing meat pig, whose slaughter-readiness is reached at half the lifespan of the parent breeds. As in modern poultry keeping, the relationship between human and animal — necessary for the soul-nature of domestic animal existence — along with the relationship to the wholeness of the farm and its precincts, is switched off. When this double relationship falls away, the pig withers in its soul-nature and the landscape