I believe one of the speakers said, "abattoir," or slaughterhouse, not "avatar," as was reported in the article.

Maybe the key to enjoying humane pork is to cut back on how often you eat it so you can afford to buy it. Like a treat rather than a staple. You don't have to eat meat for every meal or heck, every day, or heck every other day.

I was a vegetarian for years, and even though I eat meat now and have no quibble with those who abstain or who gorge on it, I can't help but think that though human beings were made to eat meat, we weren't made to eat so much of it. (Of course, there are exceptions based on geography, so I'll say Americans weren't made to eat meat every day.)

When my mom was growing up in the South, they used smoked hamhocks, bacon, fatback, etc. to season all of their greens, turnips, etc. They'd cook some cornbread and that was all they had for dinner; no seperate steak or pork chop. For lunch it was biscuits and drippings (don't ask.) And those hearty breakfasts you hear so much about? Well, they certainly didn't have bacon, eggs, sausauge, biscuits, gravy, grits, etc., every day of the week.

And they weren't weak or protein starved, even though they didn't get to actually eat a pork chop or rack of ribs or a steak every day. They ate, if lucky, one serving of meat a day, more like flavoring, and they were thankful for it because if they didn't slaughter the animal outright, they had to butcher and clean it. Ham and pork belly and pigs feet were treats, not daily staples. (mmm, pigs feet. I don't know why I love them so much, but I do.)

Unfortunately, nowadays, factory farming has made meat so cheap you can afford to eat those huge down home Southern meals everyday. And its killing us. There's this great Boondocks episode about this.

OMG OMG OMG enough!

most unforgivably, there was never any real discussion of the pig as an animal in its own right, not as an ends to meat. You could easily, if you wanted, spend an entire week of articles on pig behavior, pig stories, pig sociology, pig-human relations, pig anatomy and contributions to medicine, and so on.

But like all the other issues, this was relegated to at most a sentence or two in a series of bacon porn articles.

What else can we look forward to at Salon? Would you run, say, a "Tits Week" series of articles about how sexy boobs are and how fun they are to play with? We all know all men love tits and the ladies love to show them off (har har). Throw in a few Homer Simpsons quotes, label it controversial, and don't have a single article on the objectification of women, breast cancer, sexual harassment, etc. Do I get a prize for that idea?

In this final (hopefully) installment of the Pork Week experiment, Ms. Hepola again reminds us that "pork is a polarizing meat, and it raises complicated issues -- not just about religion and carnivore culture, but also about animal treatment." She quotes two reader emails. And then launches into a series of chef interviews extolling pork.

This is the failure of this series of articles. Superficially acknowledging that someone out there might find that there is something not quite right about pork, but failing to engage these views at all. We hear from the same voices again and again in a series of identical articles, on all the delicious ways of eating pork, on how universally appealing it is (in fact, it's not), and on how you can get the best, most elite pork money can buy.

Never was the pen handed to someone with an environmental or animal rights view on the subject. Never was it even suggested that pork should be indulged in rarely, for these or even health reasons. Instead we had a series of 'bacon porn' articles lusting after the meat and advocating its consumption in new forms.

Never once, for that matter, was the Semitic food taboo discussed--one I don't share, but that over a billion Muslims, Jews, and others around the world have in common.

To have an entire week of articles on this vacuous topic, when, as others have noted, so much else is going on in the world that is actually relevant, and then to do it so badly in a way that alienates a huge segment of your readers who are conscientious about animals, the environment, health, or even "just" religious reasons--this just shows a total lack of editorial judgment. I don't know about these other readers, but Salon has dropped several notches in my esteem. This isn't the only recent incident but this tone-deafness is probably going to drive me to find another online publication to go to first for newsmagazine content.

I find it so sad that my the kosher among my in-laws and the vegetarian amog my friends and neighbors will never experience the wonder that is truly good pork, because it is one of the few things in life that suggests to me that there truly is a loving God. Of course, the mosquitos that bite me while I'm manning the BBQ might suggest otherwise, but maybe that's just to remind me of the circle of life.

"ps: Pigs are omnivores and would eat us given half a chance. We should treat them with dignity and respect, but lets not forget that we were born to eat everything."

-- Swellesley

Does eating "everything" include other people? And worms will eat us eventually, so maybe we should eat worms, too? The point is, we were not born to eat everything, we were born to decide right from wrong and choose how to eat, and live, accordingly.

I'm so sad to see an article on the joys of pork without any mention of German butchers. My family is Bavarian and I grew up in Schaller und Weber on westphalian ham, kassler rippchen, gelbwurst, teawurst, I could go on but I'm drooling already.

Such are the flavors of holidays at home. The punchline is that Schaller und Weber, award winning german butchers, are from New York City.

ps: Pigs are omnivores and would eat us given half a chance. We should treat them with dignity and respect, but lets not forget that we were born to eat everything.