Potty pigs could ease China's water woes
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The beauty of this low-tech appropriate technology is that it is simple and inexpensive. It requires neither a Ph.D. in animal husbandry nor complex equipment. The incomes of farmers are raised, environmental quality is increased, and serious national problems, like the water shortage, are addressed.
Many experts consider pigs among the smartest of animals. Did you know that some scientists consider them as smart as primates? Some experts contend that in many ways they are smarter than a 3-year-old child.
Pigs truly get a bum rap. Maybe it's because they are not so cute that we have a prejudice against them. Think "sweat like a pig," "sweat hog" or "smells like a pig."
In fact pigs don't have sweat glands so their bodies have no sweat and no smell. Pigs like clean places to live. Potty-training porkers is a no-brainer. It's just humans who were too stupid not to have thought of this sooner!
And why do we think of pigs as dirty? Maybe because we have an image of them wallowing in mud. Yet there is a method in their madness, which it turns out it isn't madness at all.
Because without sweat glands, pigs' bodies lack a way to regulate their own temperature, pigs bathe to cool down. In the process they also avoid insects and a case of porcine sunburn. As smart as they may be, little do they know that makin' bacon comes later.
I hope that mainland farmers and policymakers see the light as this small change has such outsized results. And as Porky Pig always said: "That's all folks!"
The author is former director and vice president at ABC Television. hdzodin@ hotmail.com
