Editor:

Jeremy Madden pats himself on the hogback for eating the highest IQs in the barnyard. He credits pigs, converted to SPAM, for helping us win World War II. Has pig in his gullet made Jeremy smarter?

George “Barnyard” Shaw, perhaps a tad brainier than the rest of us, eschewed meat until he was 90. Shaw’s doctors said he’d die unless he put animals in his stomach. Instead, he asked to be carried to the graveyard by birds, sheep, lambs, cows — even live fish in an aquarium. No fan of Christianity, Shaw sacrificed himself for greater good.

Why no mention of pigs from Shaw’s list of pallbearers? It must have been an oversight.

Among other veggie intellectuals who spared the bacon providers: Einstein, Ben Franklin, Emerson, Van Gogh, Pythagoras, Confucius, Tolstoy and Thoreau.

H.G. Wells’ “Utopia” had no slaughterhouses. Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was run by pigs: The smartest guys and gals in the barnyard. 

John Rothchild
Miami Beach, Fla., and Aspen