|
||
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
|
Comment on this article
To the uninitiated, the Annual Jack Hitt Last Day of Classes Pig Roast just looks like a good time. In the eyes of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, however, it is an educational event promoting “responsible eating”: the pork is locally raised, and its bones are used later for stock. The roast, held at Yale’s one-acre educational farm on Edwards Street, is maybe the most popular YSFP event. It’s named for journalist and Yale writing teacher Jack Hitt—who saved the day at the inaugural event in 2008 by showing the inexperienced organizers how a pig is actually roasted. Since then, the crowd of happy pork-eaters has doubled every year. For this year’s event on April 27, volunteers prepared two pigs, 22 pecan pies, and 60 pounds of beans. Organizers want the pig roast to become a Yale tradition, but they are still figuring out how to deal with the ever-expanding crowds. Says organizer Nozlee Samadzadeh ’10: “We roasted two pigs in the smoker this year for the first time—I don’t think we’ll be able to fit in three!”
I found the article and photo on Yale’s annual pig roast both repellent and disingenuous. In the photo, students lift the corpse of a sentient being out of an oven; the text then tells us that this is somehow “responsible eating.” In fact, in addition to feeding into an industry that is based on completely avoidable pain and death, eating meat also has numerous bad effects on the environment. By reprinting this ridiculous claim and printing the photo of the pig’s charred body, the Yale Alumni Magazine plays into meat industry rhetoric and takes sides in a political debate—choosing a side whose only argument for killing is “it tastes good.” It’s telling that your article describes the Yale students as having “prepared two pigs, 22 pecan pies, and 60 pounds of beans,” as if a sentient being is tantamount to a mere nut or bean. At the very least, the magazine ought to cover the views of vegans and vegetarians at Yale. While the pig roast may, sadly, be growing, it’s likely that the number of Yale vegans and vegetarians is growing much faster.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
||
©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
||