Like a truffe to the slaughter

TEXAS: Pepi, a 9-month-old English sheep-pig would’ve ended up on someone’s dinner plate, or worse – in domestic blood and bone mixture, had he not found himself two pairs of children’s gumboots in a downtown Dallas Wal-Mart ten days ago. The boots, manufactured in the Solomon Islands and imported by Cherry Girl International Inc., have effectively anthropomorphised Pepi who now denies his porcine heritage outright. ‘Squrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnk!’ he said on Tuesday, to the outrage of the Texan government and his owner, Jose Lupez-Brown of Chiquito Flats, an outer suburb of Dallas. ‘Pepi was born a pig and now he wants to be a man. He has brought shame on my piggery. He is dead to me [spits].’

The anthropomorphism debate has raged across Texas since February last year, when a head of asparagus smeared lipstick over its upper stalk to persuade an Austin sous chef that it had too many human-like qualities to be steamed along with its brothers. The sous chef has since resigned.

‘We don’t know what to do,’ desperate housewife Marita Lanza, 47, cried into The Truffe’s digital voice recorder. ‘Now we cannot cook a thing! Chickens wear eyeglasses, tomatoes have fashioned themselves little booties and canned goods are donning the leotards of children’s dolls to avoid being eaten. We can't help it – these foodstuffs look cute to us and therefore we will not eat them! Do you see?!’

Pepi maintains an objective stance on the matter, claiming he didn’t ‘eeeeeaaaaarrrrrrraaaaaawwwww’ with any ‘squornt!’, though the jury is still out on whether he will be allowed to keep his new status as ‘Official Non-Human Denizen’ – a residential visa for food products introduced by the Texan government after pressures from anthropomorphist activist groups.

Peter Eng, president of Vegumans United, yesterday wrote on the organisation’s Facebook ‘fan’ page that ‘[the] bloodshed has gone on long enough. There is no reason why a horse, deer or cabbage – so long as they have a vest or brassiere on – should not have the vote. It’s a criminal outrage that a human woman and a dried soy snack with a top hat can’t walk down a suburban street holding hands. Stop the injustice now!’ At the time of posting, the group ‘10,000 strong for anthropomorphised foodstuffs’ had 212 members, with new members joining at a rate of 6 per hour.

Pepi’s case will go before a Dallas county court early next month, but until a final verdict is reached, the FDA has cautioned against leaving food unattended for too long and specifically warns against storing food near a magazine rack, on top of a television set or close to any digital media device where it may be susceptible to the influence of ‘unhinged liberal humanist minds beyond the control of the United States government’. The Truffe has not yet been blacklisted for its pro-anthropomorphism activities, but remains an affiliate of Cherry Girl International, Inc.