Diving pigs a hit in China

Monday, August 4, 2014

Thanks to an inventive farmer from Hunan province, pig diving is now a tourist attraction in China.  

Farmer Huang Demin got a lot of press in 2012 after building a three-metre wooden diving platform for his pigs. According to a story in China Daily, Huang claims the exercise improves the pigs' immunity to disease and the quality of their meat. He is able to sell his diving pork for three times the market price and his pigs are a tourist attraction.

A video of the diving pigs, however, makes it seem more like they are falling pigs since Huang has to push them off the platform.

Whether diving or falling, the concept has caught on, and Britain's Daily Mail reports that a park in the town of Donglu now has a pig-diving attraction, where tourists can watch pigs dive from three- and five-metre platforms. The trainers claim that, though the pigs are often reluctant at first, they are soon eager to dive voluntarily.

Guangming Online reports that, while some visitors to the park saw the sport as a harmless diversion that gives the pigs exercise, others called it animal cruelty that shows "a lack of respect for life." BP