This little piggie went to the market

I'm getting crankier and crankier in my old age. Top of my list of people I'd like to slap today is Prof. Regan from the BBC's Horizon documentary 'Professor Regan's Supermarket Secrets'. There was so much wrong with this programme, I don't know where to start. Perhaps most offensive is the inherent premise that we mere mortals need a scientist (clad in the obligatory white coat) to guide us through complicated supermarket shopping choices. That Professor Regan is in fact an obstetrician and not a food scientist is neither here nor there. To paraphrase Maureen Lipman, I don't have an ology but guess what? I can read. None of us need to be scientists to make informed choices.

In case you missed it, the idea of the programme was that Prof. Regan would examine the case for and against a number of high profile supermarket products (not brands) to determine whether or not they were worthy of going into her trolley. Organic food didn't make the cut.

I was quite tickled by the fact that she assessed organic food as thought it were some sort of food fad, designed by clever marketeers to part gullible consumers from their hard earned cash. It's not. It's just food. Food produced and consumed in the same way for centuries before (relatively recently) we started pumping pesticides into the soil. Why isn't anyone making documentaries weighing up the pros and cons of pesticides and artificial fertilisers? Why is the onus always on organic food to prove it's worthy of consideration? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

I think my absolute favourite part of the Horizon programme was when Prof. Regan visited two pig farms, one organic and one conventional.  In the conventional farm, we saw pigs in crowded conditions - in one case a sow in a stall with only enough room for her to lie on her side while her young suckled. The floors were made up of slats to allow animal waste to fall through and prevent the pigs walking in it.  In the organic farm meanwhile, the pigs roamed the fields, helped themselves to the plentiful organic vegetation and pooped where they liked. They appeared to be happy - as happy as pigs in shit you might say.

Fair enough. But what really took the bicuit was the conventional pig farmer's argument against organic. He maintained that pigs' native habitat is the forest and they prefer the natural canopy afforded by woodland. So therefore, he argued, a shed, by virtue of having a roof, is a more appropriate environment and closer to nature than a field. Genius theory. And Prof. Regan, the scientist and gimlet-eyed arbiter of logic just nodded. What a rigorous investigation.

How can anyone support battery farming? How? I think our attitude to animals (never mind what we're happy to put into ourselvse) is important in that it really indicates our attitude to humanity.