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When the news broke that a Toronto woman was charged with mischief for giving pigs en route to slaughter a drink of water, I immediately thought of my common-law partner’s father.

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He’s a man with a storied life, including summers working as a carnie at the Canadian National Exhibition and a stint selling pancakes in a Toronto park. In his youth, my father-in-law spent some time on a boarding farm, which had a few pigs.

Once, when he was 10 or 11 years old, the farmer sent him to feed the pigs, with the very specific instruction not to give one hog any dinner.

Why?

Because it was going to be slaughtered on farm the next day. The kid thought this was cruel; it’s the pig’s last night on earth, why not let it have a little supper?

So he disobeyed. The next day, the farmer hollered his name in rage.

“Did you feed this pig?” he demanded to know. And of course, he already knew that, because once he started to gut the carcass, it was abundantly clear the pig had been fed. The guts that spilled out where full of half-digested food — which increases the risk of contaminating the meat.