talked that night, for hours, about many things. I was, after all that had happened, concerned for him. The gap between his feelings and his lifestyle seemed so tragically vast. What could he do? This was all he knew. He did not have a high school diploma. He was only partially literate. Who would hire him if he tried to do something else? Who would invest in him and train him at his age?
When finally I left that evening, these questions were very much on my mind, and I had no answers to them. Somewhat flippantly, I tried to joke about it. “Maybe,” I said, “you'll grow broccoli or something.” He stared at me, clearly not comprehending what I could be talking about. It occurred to me, briefly, that possibly he might not know what broccoli was.
We parted that night as friends and, although we rarely saw each other, we remained friends as the years passed. I carry him in my heart and think of him, in fact, as a hero. Because, as you will soon see, impressed as I was by the courage it had taken for him to allow such painful memories to come to the surface, I had not yet seen the extent of his bravery.
When I wrote Diet for a New America, I quoted him and summarized what he had told me, but I was quite brief and did not mention his name. I thought that, living as he did among other pig farmers in Iowa, it would not be to his benefit to be associated with me.
When the book came out, I sent him a copy, saying I hoped he was comfortable with how I wrote of the evening we had shared, and directing him to the pages that contained my discussion of our time together.
Several weeks later, I received a letter from him. “Dear Mr. Robbins,” it began. “Thank you for the book. When I saw it, I got a migraine headache.”
Now, as an author, you do want to have an impact on your readers. This, however, was not what I had had in mind.
He went on, however, to explain that the headaches had gotten so bad that, as he put it, “the wife” suggested that perhaps he should read the book. She thought there might be some kind of connection between the headaches and the book. He told me that this hadn't made much sense to him, but that he had done it because “the wife” was often right about these things.
“You write good,” he told me, and I can tell you that these three words of his meant more to me than when the New York Times praised the book profusely. He then went on to say that reading the book was very hard for him, because the light it shone on what he was doing made it clear to him that it was wrong to continue. The headaches, meanwhile, kept getting worse. Then that very morning, when he had finished the book after having stayed up all night reading, he went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. “I decided, right then,” he said, “that I would sell my herd and get out of this business. I don't know what I will do, though. Maybe I will, like you said, grow broccoli.”
As it happened, he did sell his operation in Iowa and move back to Missouri, where he bought a small farm. He began growing vegetables organically—including, I am sure, broccoli—and selling them at a local farmers’ market. He still had pigs, all right, but only about ten of them, and he didn't cage or kill them. Instead, he signed a contract with local schools; they brought children out in buses on field trips to his farm for his “Pet-a-Pig” program. He showed them how intelligent pigs are and how friendly they can be if you treat them right, which he was now doing. He arranged it so that each child got a chance to give a pig a belly rub. He became nearly a vegetarian himself, lost most of his excess weight, and improved his health substantially. And, thank goodness, he actually did better financially than he had been doing before.
He and I corresponded every so often after that. I was very sad to learn, a few years ago, that he had passed away.
Do you see why I still carry this man with me in my heart? Do you see why he is such a hero to me? He dared to leap, to risk everything, to leave what was killing his spirit even though he didn't know what was next. He left behind a way of life that he knew was wrong, and he found one that he knew was right.
When I look at many of the things happening in our world, I sometimes fear we won't make it. But when I remember this man and the power of his spirit, and when I remember that there are many others whose hearts beat to the same quickening pulse, I think we will.
I can get tricked into thinking there aren't enough of us to turn the tide, but then I remember how wrong I was about the pig farmer when I first met him, and I realize that there are heroes everywhere. It's just that I can't recognize them because I think they are supposed to look or act a certain way. How blinded I can be by my own beliefs.
The man is one of my heroes because his example reminds me that we can depart from the cages we build for ourselves and for each other, and become something much better. When I first met him, I would not have thought it possible that I would ever say the things I am saying here. But this only goes to show how amazing life can be, and how you never really know what to expect. This pig farmer has become, for me, a reminder never to underestimate the power of the human heart.
I consider myself privileged to have spent that day with him, and I am grateful that I was allowed to be a catalyst for the unfolding of his spirit. I know my presence served him in some way, but I also know, and know full well, that I received far more than I gave.
To me, this is grace—to have the veils lifted from our eyes so that we can recognize and serve the goodness in each other. Others may wish for great riches, psychic powers, or for ecstatic journeys to mystical planes, but to me, this is the true magic of human life.
2
Eggs and the ChickensWho Lay Them
EGG LOVERS ARE REJOICING because the USDA, usually the last to notice anything resembling a genuine nutritional advance, has announced that eggs are much higher in vitamin D than previously thought, and also 14 percent lower in cholesterol than previously believed.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of how it is that scientific authorities could have been so wrong for so long about something as basic as the levels of vitamin D and cholesterol in eggs, the new numbers are happy news indeed for egg lovers. The egg industry is delighted to report that you can now eat up to ten eggs a week and still stay under the recommended limit of 300 mg of cholesterol per day for healthy adults (provided, of course, that you consume no other cholesterol at all from any other source).
This is putting a sunny-side-up grin on the faces of those who enjoy eating eggs and don't fancy eating their way to a heart attack. But if it's enough to make egg lovers smile, it's like mainlining Prozac for the egg industry—which, as you might expect, is wasting no time trumpeting the news that their products have been exonerated.
But wait a minute. There's something that's being overlooked in all the hoopla—something that may be even more important than the milligrams of cholesterol in an egg. Do we care how the hens are treated? Do we care about the conditions in which they live and the quality of the food they are fed? Do we care if the eggs are produced humanely and sustainably? If the new dietary information means we'll be eating more eggs that come from sick hens that live in abject misery, is that such a good thing?
The sad fact of modern industrialized egg production is that layer hens are crammed together in filthy cages so small that the birds are not able to lift a wing. The amount of space the birds are given is less than they would have if you stuffed several of them into a file drawer. One building frequently houses 30,000 hens packed together.
The birds are driven so insane by these miserable conditions that they would peck each other to death if they could. The industry, of course, doesn't want to see such a thing happen, because there's no profit to be made from dead hens
