Pigs

For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if the federal government decides to charge fees for air-polluting animals. Farmers are turning their noses up at the notion, which they contend is a possible consequence of an Environmental Protection Agency report after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases from motor vehicles amount to air pollution.

A yearlong pig hunt, including full-moon hunts with knives and dogs, will begin this weekend above several Honolulu neighborhoods plagued by porcine invaders. Areas to be opened for the hunt are along the Honolulu Mauka Trail System in the Koolau Mountains overlooking the growing Honolulu and Waikiki skyline.

A new study of DNA from pigs is rewriting the history of human migration throughout the Pacific, indicating that most island residents in the region had their origin in Vietnam. Studies of pots and other cultural artifacts had previously suggested that the Polynesian and Oceanic cultures originated in Taiwan and spread rapidly through the Pacific, an idea often called the Express Train or Speedboat Out of Taiwan.

State officials who quarantined a Stanislaus County hog farm after an industrial chemical was found in its animals said Friday that the health risk to people who ate pork from the facility appeared "minimal," as inspectors continued testing. Tests of seven urine samples and two feed samples at American Hog Farm in Ceres all came back positive for melamine, the chemical that has tainted more than 100 brands of dog and cat food, said State Veterinarian Dr. Richard Breitmeyer.

Hogs that ate feed containing the chemical blamed for the deaths of at least 16 pets will be destroyed and their owners compensated, U.S. government officials said Thursday. As many as 6,000 hogs now under quarantine may be affected. "It's the best course of action to humanely slaughter them," said Kenneth Peterson, assistant administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service. Meat from the animals also will be destroyed, officials said.

Two federal agencies said a continuing investigation affirmed that the risk to humans was very low from hogs that might have eaten contaminated pet food. They said no recall was warranted. The government said last week that 345 of 6,000 hogs that might have eaten the food were believed to have been placed on the path to slaughter, but that almost all were still on farms in California, New York and South Carolina.

About 56,000 pigs that were fed contaminated pet food scraps are safe to be eaten, the Agriculture Department said. The all-clear allows the pigs to be slaughtered for human consumption. They had been on hold or under quarantine in seven states: California, Illinois, Kansas, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Utah.

State wildlife officials said Wednesday they wanted to know how the huge hog dubbed "Monster Pig" got into a fenced hunting preserve where it was chased down and shot to death by an 11-year-old boy. The young hunter is not accused of doing anything illegal, but the head enforcement officer for Alabama's wildlife agency said agents were trying to determine whether anyone broke a state law prohibiting the transportation and release of live feral swine.

According to the calendar, this is the Year of the Pig in China. Cute little piggies in all forms -- ceramic, stuffed, cast, drawn -- are ubiquitous these days. But it isn't tender feelings for swine that caused Wang Bin, a retired export company worker, to start replacing pork with vegetables, chicken and fish as the mainstays of her family's diet. Like hundreds of millions of other Chinese, she's simply feeling the pinch of pork prices that have gone up 40% or more over the last year.

Efforts to restore the ecosystem on Santa Cruz Island to its native state reached a milestone this week as scientists said that a two-year program to eliminate feral pigs had been a success. Although the last confirmed pig death was last year, the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy, which owns 75% of the island, have been monitoring the results of the $5-million eradication effort since then to gauge the program's effects. They say the island's endangered species are rebounding.