Customer Reviews

Christien Meindertsma PIG 05049

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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... and an art project both useful (i.e. objectively informative) and inspriring.
Some aspects:

- apart from a short foreword and author's "explanation" at the end, the book contains 185 double pages. On each right page, you will find a picture of the end product made from pig #05049. The corresponding page on the left carries a very short written description of the final pig product and its use for human consumption or other consumptive/industrial uses. Some pictures extend over both right and left pages. Each right page shows the accumulated weight of the pig's parts shown so far in grams, eventually adding up to the 103,700 grams which pig #05049 weighed at the time of its slaughter. The book also contains an index for quick reference, plus a genealogical map of the product categories, and a map showing the products' places of origin in the pig's body. IMHO, the written explanations should have digged a lot deeper, carrying more information about the respective products and involved industries. The book is less of a "read" than rather of a "look".

- the author takes a highly commendable neutral, factual stance, herself advocating neither vegetarianism nor the meat industry. It's ultimately sober, leaving it to the consumers of this piece of art to make up their own hearts and minds about the subject. No lecturing, no preaching, no patronizing, no advertizing. The impression left by the book and its subject matter is 100% up to the reader and his/her individual value preferences. In that sense, the book depicts reality in a way which reflects the individual beholder, like a true piece of art. I got both hungry and quite grateful towards pig 05049 (and its millions of sisters) for contributing so much to my life in comfort.

- My book (3rd imprint, October 2009) is not covered in pig skin (just cardboard and paper), nor is it numbered. I wonder to what extent the cheap appearance justifies the price.

- While this would, admittedly, not be very ingenious, similar works on cattle and chicken (for example) would be very interesting to me, too. They should just go substantially deeper on the research side (see above).

This book proves that a picture is worth a thousand words. You can read every book about the modern food industry, but it is this photo essay that most brilliantly and elegantly captures the entire "food" chain.

PIG 05049 was a fun book to browse through --- it's not really a book for cover-to-cover reading. it's fascinating to see where poor pig 05049 ended up and at times quite astonishing and unexpected (keyword: bread).

a real pig-out :-)

This book is important. It's really, really important. We want to live more compassionate lives? Forget about eating animals, if we want to stop harming them, we need to live without some wonderful things, like certain forms of renewable energy, without paintings, without photographs. Beautiful things, inherent to our experience as humans, only exist because of the slaughter of beautiful animals, inherent to our experience as humans. I purchased this book because I wanted a record, I wanted tangible proof, of just how far the human mind can reduce this planet and all life on it to things, for both the sake of arrogance and convenience, and for the sake of art, which PIG 05049 surely is. Happy existing, humans. Happy existing.

Actually I haven't read this book, and from visiting the blog mentioning about this book, I kind of feel inspired. We can see things from different angles, and this book addresses a good walking example. See, what would we respond if we are able to know something that "it" experienced? Would we save more, or show more reverence? Pig is just one of the many cases. Think about it before and after you buy something, and also before and after you dump it.