The PigCasso Art Show at the World Pork Expo

June 2-5, the world's pork producers and the usual assortment of groupies and hangers-on will be descending on the Iowa State Fairgrounds for the 20th annual World Pork Expo.  They'll listen to speakers, attend seminars and events and hobnob with other movers and shakers in an industry that's optimistically expecting to produce just under 100 million metric tons worth of pig flesh for human consumption in 2009.  The speakers and topics aren't up on the site yet.  Maybe the editor of National Provisioner will kick things off by whipping the attendees into a frenzy with one of her diatribes against the sinister animal rights activists.  PR experts will conduct role playing seminars on how to feign moral indignation when the next undercover slaughterhouse video surfaces.  The attendees will need to unwind a little too.  Along with music and a golf outing, the website says there's going to be a clay target shooting competition.  There'll also be plenty of memorabilia, like the commemorative toy tractor.  Of course no World Pork Expo would be complete without the breathless reporters from National Hog Farmer Magazine taking photos of the VIP's as they arrive.

Not so predictable is the PigCasso art show.  You know at the very top of the achievements section of some ambitious PR executive's resume it says, "Came up with the name PigCasso for the Annual World Pork Expo art competition."  Meanwhile, this executive's rival, whose LichtenSwine was the runner-up, is left to curse fate and a naming committee whose superficial knowledge of art history biased them in favor of the bigger, better known names.

Last year, Herbert Goodwin, of Gary, Indiana, won Best of Show for his painting, "Pork Producer."  He won $400 and a ribbon.  What is it with pig slaughterers and their ribbons?  It's kind of reached fetish proportions.  Ribbons for winning paintings, ribbons for soon-to-be-slaughtered 4H club victors.  How is it that they arbitrarily landed on the ribbon as the ideal way to honor the artistic rendering of the slaughter and the emergence of a new generation of slaughterers?

Michael Frakes, a PigCasso judge, called Pork Producer,

visually engaging, with the use of wonderful details, colors and shadowing ... we had a lot of talent this year.  It was a challenge to pick the best in each division.

Each division?  As if discovering an art competition is part of the World Pork Expo weren't paradigm-shifting enough.  Now we find out there's multiple divisions.  It turns out the artists can enter the following categories:  Oil, water and soluble PigMents (another coup for the punning PR executive?); Drawings, prints, pastels; sculpture; textiles, fibers, crafts; and photography.  Why not break it down even further into style and movement?  impressionism, dada, surrealism, post impressionism.  Jackson Pollock-type abstract expressionism might be the ideal way of rendering the spattering of blood when the heroic pork producer raises the stun bolt to the head.  (The entry form for this year's PigCasso competition isn't on the site yet.  The PR release about last year's competition is here.)

Here's the most amazing thing of all:  people actually enter this competition.  You think of artists contemplating the cosmos, trying to find their place in the world.  You go down a list of the artist's themes -- love, redemption, despair, rapture ... pork production?  When these artists bought their very first sketchpad, did they have any inkling that at some point in the future they'd be painting helpless pigs confined in crates, dying in train cars, brutalized, shackle hoisted, stun bolted?  But maybe those aren't the "wonderful details" judge Michael Frakes was praising in Pork Producer.  Maybe like so many of their contemporarites, the World Pork Expo judges have discarded realism in favor of more post-modern sensibilities.

The works with the most detailed rendering of pork production are in the short film category.  It's not an official PigCasso category, but if it were, the winner hands down would be the undercover video shot at the Hormel supplier farm in Bayard, Iowa.  Frakesean details suffuse the entire film:  metal rods, wooden palettes, hard cement floors.  Anyone who's seen this video would have to agree with the judge, Satan, who awarded it the first prize ribbon.

Gifts for the hog butcher who has everything

Hog producers who go to the Pork Expo in June won't come away empty-handed.  There's all kinds of cool gifts and mementos to bring home.

Yes, it's unique all right.  Not many desktop items symbolize your role in the slaughter of over a hundred million living beings each year.  But this pig cell phone holder isn't just decorative.  When the call comes in from the boys on the farm that they were playing around with the piglets, maybe got a little carried away with those sharp metal stakes, that some of the undercover footage might not go over so well when it hits the local news, the hog producer can take that call using his pig cell phone holder!

Pig Lighter.  It's only human nature.  People get to boasting.  Hog producers are no different.  They start comparing numbers, going for bragging rights.  "You processed fifty thousand last month?  Ha, that's nothing.  I could slaughter fifty thousand in my sleep.  Says who?  Says me."  Then just when things are about to get heated, the hog producer pulls out his pig lighter and offers to light his competitor's cigar and camaraderie reigns once again.  And note the placement of the lighter device, right where the stun bolt shatters the pig's skull.  "It's perfectly aimed, right above the brain.  Maybe I should hire the guy."  This observation can make a good ice breaker when the hog producer experiences any awkward lulls in social settings or when he simply needs a fresh supply of banter to amuse other folks in the pork production world.

An adorable plush pig that, according to the product description, makes an "oink oink" sound when you squeeze it.  I don't mean to find fault.  The Pork expo gift committee is no doubt harried and overworked.  But is "oink oink" the only sound they could think of making?  What about the screams of ungodly terror at the pig's final moments.  That's what the hog producer wants memorialized.  That way when his kids ask him what sound does a pig make, Daddy, daddy can squeeze the plush toy, which emits the terrified wailing of the slowly dying hog, and say, "that's the sound a pig makes, kids."

Yes, the product description is right.  This handmade treasure is sure to be passed down from generation to generation.  A rope tailed oak piggy bank like this has family heirloom written all over it.  I even think the folks at the pork expo gift committee were a little too modest.  It won't just be passed down.  Future generations will fight over it.  Who did grandpa Pig Slaughterer leave the roped tailed pig bank to?  Families have dissolved over less than this.

Anyhow, this is just a small sampling of the exciting gifts available at the Pork Expo.

The World Pork Expo -- booth #21, the captive bolt stunning gun firing range

Booth #21, the captive bolt stun gun firing range

All work and no play?  No siree!  That's our motto at the World Pork Expo.  And we want it to be your motto too!  After a long day studying feed ratios and penning equipment, it's time to unwind a little.  Come test your marksmanship at the captive bolt stun gun firing range.  We ain't talking paper targets here.  The live piggies will keep you on your toes.  The way they wriggle and squirm they're slippier than a watermelon seed.  Just make sure to wear old clothes, 'cuz those buggers spurt a regular blood geyser.  Then after you clean yourself off, it's time to head to the bar and finish off the night with a viewing of America's funniest slaughterhouse bloopers.    The World Pork Expo starts June 3rd.  So mark your calendars and we'll see you here.

Pork Council's 2008 Commemorative Toy Tractor and Hog Carcass

Painstakingly crafted down to the smallest detail, the 2008 Commemorative Hog Carcass comes with, not one, but two separate captive bolt stun gun holes to the head -- the misfired shot that merely stunned the hog and the killshot that pierced its brain.  But the attention to detail doesn't stop there!  It also comes with eyes frozen with ungodly terror and legs spalyed out as the hog struggles in a desperate but futile attempt to escape.  Squeeze it and it emits a realistic, piercing scream of pre-slaughter terror.  You won't believe how life-like it is!  This true collector's item makes the perfect gift for all those hard-to-shop-for sadists and self-styled compassionate, animal loving progressives who look the other way when it's time for dinner.  The vibrant and decorative 2008 commemorative hog carcass comes with its own display base.  It's sure to liven up any room.  So order yours today.

Also collect these other popular hog figurines:

Hog dunked alive in boiling water

Hog confined in tiny crate

Hog carcass dangling from meat hook

Pile of hog carcasses (deluxe edition)