HSINCHU: A festival in Taiwan where enormous pigs are slaughtered and displayed is drawing smaller crowds as animal rights activists alter perceptions of the controversial tradition.
The carcasses, bristles shaved and pinned with decorations, were displayed upside-down, the heads with pineapples stuffed in their mouths, dwarfed by their bloated torsos. Tseng Jia-yun's family spent three years fattening up their pig, which was slaughtered last week weighing 400kg."As a Hakka, I am proud of this divine pig culture, it's worth preserving," he told AFP, describing the concerns of animal rights groups as"nonsense".OUTDATED RITUAL?They say the heaviest pigs are force fed, often in small cages to the point where the morbidly obese animals are unable to get up.
Researchers and locals say that while the festival dates back centuries, the tradition of sacrificing fattened pigs is a more recent phenomenon.