Greetings jovial viewers, welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Christmas Day is a time to celebrate the life of Jesus Christ who was the epitome of compassion and love for all beings.

A man who is representative of the ideals of Christmas is Mr. John Robbins of the USA. John Robbins is a true vegan hero who turned down inheriting his family’s enormously profitable ice cream company Baskin-Robbins because he did not wish to promote factory farming or the consumption of animal products.

After graduating from the renowned University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Robbins attended Antioch College where he earned a Master’s Degree. Thereafter, he became one of the pioneering authors to discuss the link between our diet and animal welfare, environment and human health.

His popular books include: Diet for a New America; The Awakened Heart: Meditations on Finding Harmony in a Changing World; The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World; and Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World’s Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples.

Mr. Robbins also founded EarthSave International, a US-based non-profit organization that is dedicated to informing the public about the benefits of healthy and life-sustaining vegan food choices.

For his significant work for the animals and planet, Mr. Robbins has been recognized with numerous awards. He was also the esteemed recipient of Supreme Master Ching Hai’s Shining World Leadership Award.

In his best-selling book, “The Food Revolution,” he recounts a touching story of his time spent with a pig farmer and his family in a chapter entitled “The Pig Farmer.”

Mr. Robbins met the farmer while doing undercover investigative research about the cruelties of meat production in Iowa, USA. Unexpectedly, he was invited to stay for dinner with the family. Over a three part series, we bring you a reading in its entirety of “The Pig Farmer.”

Yesterday in Part 1 of our program, we learned how Mr. Robbins visited a pig farm posing as a researcher on animal agriculture and did not disclose to the farmer he was documenting animal abuse in the livestock industry. Mr. Robbins discovered the absolutely horrific conditions under which the pigs lived and he felt the farmer did not care at all about the gentle beings.

During dinner with the farmer and his family, despite Mr. Robbins avoiding the topic of animal welfare, the farmer somehow guessed Mr. Robbins was opposed to pig farms and said, “Sometimes I wish you animal rights people would just drop dead.” We now continue with the story.

As he spoke it, the knot in my stomach was relaxing, because it was becoming clear, and I was glad of it, that he meant me no harm, but just needed to vent. Part of his frustration, it seemed, was that even though he didn’t like doing some of the things he did to the animals - cooping them up in such small cages, using so many drugs, taking the babies away from their mothers so quickly after their births - he didn’t see that he had any choice.

He would be at a disadvantage and unable to compete economically if he didn’t do things that way. This is how it’s done today, he told me, and he had to do it too. He didn’t like it, but he liked even less being blamed for doing what he had to do in order to feed his family.

As it happened, I had just the week before been at a much larger hog operation, where I learned that it was part of their business strategy to try to put people like him out of business by going full-tilt into the mass production of assembly-line pigs, so that small farmers wouldn’t be able to keep up. What I had heard corroborated everything he was saying. Almost despite myself, I began to grasp the poignancy of this man’s human predicament.

I was in his home because he and his wife had invited me to be there. And looking around, it was obvious that they were having a hard time making ends meet. Things were threadbare. This family was on the edge. Raising pigs, apparently, was the only way the farmer knew how to make a living, so he did it even though, as was becoming evident the more we talked, he didn’t like one bit the direction hog farming was going.

At times, as he spoke about how much he hated the modern factory methods of pork production, he reminded me of the very animal rights people who a few minutes before he said he wished would drop dead. As the conversation progressed, I actually began to develop some sense of respect for this man whom I had earlier judged so harshly. There was decency in him. There was something within him that meant well.

But as I began to sense a spirit of goodness in him, I could only wonder all the more how he could treat his pigs the way he did. Little did I know that I was about to find out. . . We are talking along, when suddenly he looks troubled. He slumps over, his head in his hands. He looks broken, and there is a sense of something awful having happened. Has he had a heart attack? A stroke? I’m finding it hard to breathe, and hard to think clearly.

“What’s happening?” I ask. It takes him awhile to answer, but finally he does. I am relieved that he is able to speak, although what he says hardly brings any clarity to the situation. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, “and I don’t want to talk about it.” As he speaks, he makes a motion with his hand, as if he were pushing something away.

For the next several minutes we continue to converse, but I’m quite uneasy. Things seem incomplete and confusing. Something dark has entered the room, and I don’t know what it is or how to deal with it. Then, as we are speaking, it happens again. Once again a look of despondency comes over him. Sitting there, I know I’m in the presence of something bleak and oppressive. I try to be present with what’s happening, but it’s not easy. Again I’m finding it hard to breathe.

Finally, he looks at me, and I notice his eyes are teary. “You’re right,” he says. I, of course, always like to be told that I am right, but in this instance I don’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about. He continues. “No animal,” he says, “should be treated like that. Especially hogs. Do you know that they’re intelligent animals? They’re even friendly, if you treat ’em right. But I don’t.”

There are tears welling up in his eyes. And he tells me that he has just had a memory come back of something that happened in his childhood, something he hasn’t thought of for many years. It’s come back in stages, he says.

After these messages, we will have more from “The Pig Farmer,” a chapter from John Robbins’s best-selling book, “The Food Revolution.” Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. We now continue with our reading of a chapter from John Robbins’s best-selling book, “The Food Revolution.” entitled “The Pig Farmer.”

He grew up, he tells me, on a small farm in rural Missouri, the old-fashioned kind where animals ran around, with barnyards and pastures, and where they all had names. I learn, too, that he was an only child, the son of a powerful father who ran things with an iron fist. With no brothers or sisters, he often felt lonely, but found companionship among the animals on the farm, particularly several dogs, who were as friends to him.

And, he tells me, and this I am quite surprised to hear, he had a pet pig. As he proceeds to tell me about this pig, it is as if he is becoming a different person. Before he had spoken primarily in a monotone; but now his voice grows lively. His body language, which until this point seemed to speak primarily of long suffering, now becomes animated. There is something fresh taking place.

In the summer, he tells me, he would sleep in the barn. It was cooler there than in the house, and the pig would come over and sleep alongside him, asking fondly to have her belly rubbed, which he was glad to do. There was a pond on their property, he goes on, and he liked to swim in it when the weather was hot, but one of the dogs would get excited when he did, and would ruin things.

The dog would jump into the water and swim up on top of him, scratching him with her paws and making things miserable for him. He was about to give up on swimming, but then, as fate would have it, the pig, of all people, stepped in and saved the day. Evidently the pig could swim, for she would plop herself into the water, swim out where the dog was bothering the boy, and insert herself between them.

She’d stay between the dog and the boy, and keep the dog at bay. She was, as best I could make out, functioning in the situation something like a lifeguard, or in this case, perhaps more of a life-pig. I’m listening to this hog farmer tell me these stories about his pet pig, and I’m thoroughly enjoying both myself and him, and rather astounded at how things are transpiring, when once again, it happens.

Once again a look of defeat sweeps across this man’s face, and once again I sense the presence of something very sad. Something in him, I know, is struggling to make its way toward life through anguish and pain, but I don’t know what it is or how, indeed, to help him. “What happened to your pig?” I ask. He sighs, and it’s as though the whole world’s pain is contained in that sigh.

Then, slowly, he speaks. “My father made me butcher it.” “Did you?” I ask. “I ran away, but I couldn’t hide. They found me.” “What happened?” “My father gave me a choice.” “What was that?” “He told me, ‘You either slaughter that animal or you’re no longer my son.’” Some choice, I think, feeling the weight of how fathers have so often trained their sons not to care, to be what they call brave and strong, but what so often turns out to be callous and closed-hearted.

“So I did it,” he says, and now his tears begin to flow, making their way down his cheeks. I am touched and humbled. This man, whom I had judged to be without human feeling, is weeping in front of me, a stranger. This man, whom I had seen as callous and even heartless, is actually someone who cares, and deeply. How wrong, how profoundly and terribly wrong I had been.

In the minutes that follow, it becomes clear to me what has been happening. The pig farmer has remembered something that was so painful, that was such a profound trauma, that he had not been able to cope with it when it had happened. Something had shut down, then. It was just too much to bear. Somewhere in his young, formative psyche he made a resolution never to be that hurt again, never to be that vulnerable again.

And he built a wall around the place where the pain had occurred, which was the place where his love and attachment to that pig was located, which was his heart. And now here he was, slaughtering pigs for a living - still, I imagined, seeking his father’s approval. God, what we men will do, I thought, to get our fathers’ acceptance. I had thought he was a cold and closed human being, but now I saw the truth.

That was Part 2 of our reading of “The Pig Farmer,” a chapter from John Robbins’s best-selling book “The Food Revolution.” What a heartwarming revelation Mr. Robbins was imparted by the pig farmer about his childhood memories with his pig companion.

The same kindness and compassion truly resides in every human heart. It is this same spirit of love for all beings that all past and present Masters remind us to nurture to return to our dignified and virtuous nature.

Please join us again tomorrow for the conclusion of this heart-felt story. in Part 3 of our program. Books by John Robbins are available at

Caring viewers, thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment, following Noteworthy News. Wishing you a beautiful Christmas Day and may all the beings on the planet rejoice in harmony.

A substantial number of people in the Netherlands are living greener, healthier, happier lives by riding bicycles instead of driving cars.

Forty-seven percent use the bike for going to school or to work. Forty percent use the bike for recreational purposes and 13% use it for shopping, etc.

Find out more about the refreshing lifestyle of the Dutch. This Monday, December 28 on Healthy Living.