Talk:Domestic pig

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Contents 1 Too brief, low quality 2 NPOV marker 3 Seems Biased 4 Age 5 Move to Intensive Pig Farming Article 6 Why two breed lists? 7 Needs Attention 8 domectic pig, pig ( genus sus), wild boar, feral pig. 9 Domesticated 2500 years ago? 10 WP Agriculture? 11 Can we pick a Verification Template! 12 Rare Breeds 13 Global Pig Stocks

[edit] Too brief, low quality

One would think that this article would be entirely more comprehensive and certainly lacking in grammatical errors. So many references missing, it's not funny.

Introduction is badly formed (not a description, but rather jumps right into the question of the name of the species versus the wild boar); also, some "writers" (?) dispute the species name, not taxonomists?

71.241.120.149 09:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV marker

I added the {{npov}} alert as the recent edits by Barbara Shack appear to be strongly biased by the "animal rights" bias, without a balanced view from farmers, butchers and consumers. These edits suggest that pigs are usually kept in cruel, inhumane and unhealthy environments with high death rates before slaughter. There is a purported quote without reference from the "National Hog Farmer". This should be cited other than copying several paragraphs from factoryfarming.com, in turn hosted by http://vegsource.com/. A balance should include (with references) that the meat is more tender and tasteful, and economics of farming better with relaxed, happy and healthy animals. --Scott Davis ^Talk 07:11, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Barbara Shack 13:59, 11 March 2006 (UTC)Complaints about conditions of factory farmed pigs and other animals are very common. I believe these complaints are likely to be valid. If economics of farming were better with extensively reared pigs extensive farming would be practiced by all except sadistic farmers.

While I agree that running pigs in paddocks is not practical for the volume of pork consumed in many countries, using only animal rights activist pages as references for production is biased. These often highlight practices that are neither "best practice" nor even legal, without describing the "normal" situation. Another reason to keep pigs in sheds is management of waste products. Disease management is also important, but a significant loss in transport to market is ridiculous - the farmer doesn't get paid for dead animals! The $8M/year (one truck, USA or world-wide?) is not given a context - is it 50% or 0.00001% ? --Scott Davis ^Talk 06:29, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I guess what I'd like to see is an article built up from references from government and university sources, rather than activists. A lot of the issues I have trouble with here are not really specific to the domestic pig article anyway. They might be fine in factory farming, intensive farming, or animal cruelty articles. These issues may also apply to other animal production, such as chickens and cattle.

I've spent the afternoon on this section, and hope I've improved it. Major sentences removed are listed below.

I have removed " Arthritis is also common due to rapid growth, unnatural concrete floors and lack of exercise." as [1] suggests the largest contributor of arthritis is Erysipelas. This was the best reference I could find with Google (most hits for pig arthritis got a fad diet, or stuff about guinea pigs).

Removed "Sows can spend their lives forced into very small spaces, deprived of fresh air, the sun and straw bedding. Pigs cannot root naturally in soft ground or forage for food naturally. Denying pigs their basic needs causes severe physical and psychological stress." as it seems emotional. Better would be to describe the natural behaviour, which has nothing to do wth food, in the appropriate section.

Removed "Tail biting is one of many unnatural behaviours, which develop when they are kept in unstimulating factory farms. " has nothing to do with pigs as food.

--Scott Davis ^Talk 08:10, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for spending so much time on it - it looks much better! John Paul 29 August 2006

[edit] Seems Biased

While informative, this piece appears to have been written by animal rights activists. It has a strong PETA or SPCA "feel" to it. A more balanced presentation would be more helpful to the general reader.

Scottsicle

Please feel welcome to improve the article in any way you see fit. Barbara and I have both put a lot of effort into it (with different POVs). It would be quite disappointing (but perhaps understandable) if you decided that the best fix is to delete the three subsections of "As food". --Scott Davis ^Talk 14:05, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I've trimmed a bunch more of the discussion of farming style and treatment. This article should be about the species, not a general discussion on humane treatment of animals produced for meat.

One sentence I removed as I don't believe it: "...and in later life to keep their teeth from killing them by entering their skulls (in the wild this would not be a problem b/c they would be worn off". The idea should be added back if there is a reliable reference.

I also removed

According to "Factory Pork Production" (an animal rights activist website)[2], the National Hog Farmer magazine advised, "Crowding Pigs Pays...", and pigs may suffer sores due to cramped conditions and lack of straw or other bedding. It claims that an industry representative wrote, “straw is very expensive and there certainly would not be a supply of straw in the country to supply all the farrowing pens in the U.S”.

as I cannot find a copy of the National Hog Farmer article online, and do not have access to the paper edition (and factoryfarming.com does not say which edition to facilitate a search).

Also removed:

Crowding pigs during transport to slaughter saves money. According to "Factory Pork Production", an industry expert wrote, “Death losses during transport are too high — amounting to more than $8 million per year. But it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out why we load as many hogs on a truck as we do. It's cheaper. So it becomes a moral issue. Is it right to overload a truck and save $.25 per head in the process, while the overcrowding contributes to the deaths of 80,000 hogs each year?”

due to no obvious reason for being there. --Scott Davis ^Talk 08:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I was quite surprised to see the pictures of animals kept in cages on this page! I don't think it's appropriate for an encyclopedic entry on domesticated pigs, which I would have expected to have information on breeds, behaviours, domestication, beliefs and customs centered around pigs, that sort of thing (cf entry on cats or cows). The talk of pigs' intelligence seems to be another red herring. Even as a vegetarian, it seems awfully much like vegetarian propoganda to me. Cheers, John Paul 7 July 2006

[edit] Age

What is the average life expectancy of a pig assuming it died from natural causes? I think this would be good information to add.Rt66lt 22:30, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that is what the last sentence of the first paragraph ("The average age of domestic pigs is around 10 years old.") means, but I am not sure. It certainly does not mean what it says. JimCubb 18:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I have now removed that claim as it certainly didn't mean what it said, and sounds a bit high even for what it is likely to have meant. It should be referenced before being reinstated. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:37, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move to Intensive Pig Farming Article

Hi, I have moved much of the criticism of intensive pig farming to Intensive pig farming#Criticism of intensive piggeries. 80.189.240.94 18:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the NPOV marker as I think problems have been resolved. I notice Scott has removed the gestation crate photo introduced by Barabara, however I am pleased to report this photo is still showing at intensive pig farming and factory farming. 80.189.196.18 13:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The photo I left is a better picture, and has a better licence. The article didn't need two pictures of intensive pig farming - it's supposed to be about the species. --Scott Davis ^Talk 15:24, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why two breed lists?

There are currently two breed lists: a list "Breeds within the UK" without links immediately followed by a longer "List of domestic pig breeds" with (mostly red) links to breed articles. Is there a reason to keep the first list? --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:37, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

There appeared to be no reason for the second UK list, since each breed was repeated under the "List of domestic pig breeds." I have removed the UK list and reformatted the section. --Chobbs138 18:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that the 'List of domestic pig breeds' can be moved to a separate page. The list seems out of place in the article. The WP article on Cattle has already done this with the List of breeds of cattle. If there are objections, the change can be reverted. -- Hampshire2004 (talk) 00:00, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Needs Attention

• Taxonomy is wrong (genus, taxon) should be Sus domestica as per ICZN decision IIRC.

* I tried looking this up at the ICZN web site [3] which sent me to the Zoo bank [4]. However, at their site I found all possible spellings and no reference to any decision. Now I'm just a clueless physicist trying to find the right way to write "pig" for my thesis, so maybe someone else is better suited to find the reference to this decision. --Alf 17:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Aha! Opinion 2027 does not refer to pigs! It refers to those animals where the domestic form was described first (as a species, maybe including the wild form, maybe not) and the wild one was separately described later. These, and only these, MUST have the domestic form as a separate species (dogs, cats, cattle, you name it). But it would possibly be better to treat the porker at species level too - for one thing, to be consistent with the others, and for another thing, a razorback hog (which is a porker returning to a "wild" state) and a wild boar are different enough (the razorback has the blunt skull and different behavior of the domestic pig). They can produce fertile offspring of course, but this is no sure-fire criterion, and in any case it's mainly cosmetic anyway. So there is no hard-and-fast rule, actually; the issue could be discussed in the article. Dysmorodrepanis 18:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

So since this opinion doesn't apply to pigs then the name should be Sus scrofa domestica and not Sus domestica? --Alf 18:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

* While we're at it I have a couple of add-on questions: domestica or domesticus? I believe it's female and male ending in latin when making a property into an adjective. So has anyone decided on whether pigs are female or not? Some of them seem fairly butch to me :) --Alf 17:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

domestica it is... fairly straightforward, this one... the name means literally "domesticated sow". (It would have been "Porcus domesticus" if Linne would have chosen the Latin term for male pigs)

* Thirdly, is it bad of me to split up your comment like this. Should I've replied at the end instead? I can fell my wiki-karma draining away already. --Alf 17:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I can restore that, m'man... here, a handy karma point: o <- KARMA! No, make that two: oo Dysmorodrepanis 18:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

• lists should be split from article as with other animal breeds; some famous or mainstay breeds around the globe should be briefly mentioned in section (traditional/landrace breeds vs high-intensive farming stock).

• layout: table -> left?

• Intro contains much information which does not belong here. Wild Boar subspecies are nice (because not only the European one has contributed to the ole porker - I think cristatus and/or vittatus too. At least.) but they should be part of a discussion on how the domestic pig was bred.

• Conservation status is "Domesticated". rm IUCN link; it is not appropriate for this animal. Dysmorodrepanis 02:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] domectic pig, pig ( genus sus), wild boar, feral pig.

this articles are having confusion. I think that someone or a wikiproyect must clarify. This one is encyclopedia. It must not to be wrong. genus sus is not only pig. a wild boar is not a domestic pig o a feral pig a feral or wild pig is a domestic pig specimen. Today they are put in "wild boar" article.

Anselmocisneros 12:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Domesticated 2500 years ago?

That does not seem right at all. That would actually make it one of the last animals to be domesticated. The Livestock article says 7000 BC which makes a lot more sense.

• • I have a reliable source for 7000 BC. I'm changing and sourcing.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 18:06, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP Agriculture?

I found categories for both Livestock and Domesticated Animals, but projects only for Cats, dogs and Dog Breeds, Horse Breeds. It seems there ought to be a project covering livestock and other agricultural topics, as quite a few of the sites need clean up. Therefore, I have proposed a Project "Agriculture". If there is any interest in this or an alternative project "Livestock", or if someone knows of something already out there, please comment at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Agriculture.--Doug. 18:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can we pick a Verification Template!

This article uses {{refimprove}}, {{citations missing}}, and inline {{fact}} tags in addition to clean up and copy editing templates. I have to scroll down just to see the first line of the article. We need to leave the project/cleanup tag and pick one other way to tag this article if we want to and then work on it.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 18:35, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It seemed redundant to have both refimprove and citations notices. Removed refimprove. --Chobbs138 18:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Concur, though I'm not sure that is the more commonly used of the two. It also seems redundant to have both a general article tag and inline {{Fact}} tags, unless someone is challenging specific text and intends to delete it, even then, it seems better in such a case to either go with the general article tag or remove the offending text to the talk page per Verifiability, or if it's really bad, just delete it. BTW, I think you killed my link by changing the reference format, I fixed it. Can you refer me to Manual of Style entry on BC vs BCE, I was wondering about that issue, and I see you changed my BCE entry?--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 19:46, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

On a similar matter, I'm removing the copyedit template, as that is part of cleanup and this needs general cleanup.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 22:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rare Breeds

I like the idea of a rare breeds section, but why do we only have one listed, while Tamworths, GOSs, etc. are in the regular list?--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 22:15, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Global Pig Stocks

The Global Pig Stocks table is 1) out of date (there is 2006 data available), 2) incorrect (the data doesn't match the source) and 3) incorrectly sourced, the correct source is here, the other one is an archive that only runs to 2004. I noticed when someone tried to about double Denmark's numbers. The new Denmark figure was way off so I reverted but the current data is not correct even for 2005. I'll try to fix if I get a moment but for now, I'll just mark it up as a "to do" item for this page.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 04:48, 20 November 2007 (UTC)