People & Pigs

Public-health workers know that trichinosis could be virtually wiped out if the feeding of uncooked garbage to pigs could be stopped. But using cooked garbage is an expensive proposition, and hog farmers have long refused to comply. Meanwhile, an average 350 U.S. citizens fall ill and 13 die each year from trichinosis.

This year hog farmers finally took action. Reason: vesicular exanthem, a disease of hogs that, unlike trichinosis, is not transmissible to human beings. Reports the University of Michigan's Professor Arthur Dearth Moore in the A.M.A. Journal: "This virus disease spread in the country at wildfire rate . . . through the feeding of raw garbage. [It] not only hit the large herds of the garbage-feeders but, because of its infectiousness, quarantines were called for that [also] stopped the shipping of grain-fed swine out of many areas. That affected the farmer's pocketbook. Without hesitation, the farmers turned on the legislators, and most . . . responded with a speed and unanimity . . . seldom witnessed." Laws forbidding the feeding of uncooked garbage to hogs are now on the statute books of 43 states.

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