Holiday Gift Guide Includes Dead Piglet Piggy Banks

by Stephanie Feldstein · 2010-11-15 11:00:00 UTC
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'Tis the season when people start to fret over what to get their hard-to-shop-for friends, and when publications create holiday shopping guides to help out. This year, Vancouver Magazine's Holiday Gift Guide 2010 includes several socially-conscious gifts, like reusable organic cotton shopping bags, vegan handbags from Matt & Nat, and eco-friendly journals made of wildflower-seed-paper that can actually be planted.

And for the friend who has everything except a conscience, Vancouver Magazine's "essential guide" also includes the Taxidermied Piglet Bank.

The banks are sold by Vancouver-based website, thecheeky.com, under a blood-spattered "Piglet Bank" logo. The item is described as "a real piglet that has been taxidermied and inserted with what all piglets probably dream of as babies, a coin storage unit and a cork plug." And it can be yours for just $4,000.

That the website claims they only use piglets who have died of "natural causes" doesn't make this any less disgusting. And the fact that it's unlikely that too many orders will be placed for the $4,000 carcasses (and, even if they are, it will be negligible compared to the number of pigs slaughtered for Christmas hams) also misses the point.

The so-called "piggy bank of all piggy banks" takes insensitivity toward animals to a whole new level. Thecheeky.com's owners, Ryan McCormick and Colin Hart, have unapologetically reduced what was once an intelligent individual with feelings to a thing; an expensive joke.

The Winnipeg Humane Society, who is protesting the piglet banks' inclusion in the gift guide, aptly states that "While animals are routinely killed for their meat and hides, this is a particularly callous and demeaning exploitation of a baby animal's dead body. It trivializes the life (and death) of a sentient being."

It's no wonder that our society is so willing to ignore the suffering of animals in agriculture to keep bacon cheap, or why someone could just walk away from nearly 1,000 pigs and just let them starve to death.

By including the taxidermied piglet bank in their list of gift ideas to "win friends and influence people," Vancouver Magazine is sending the message that they also believe dead baby animals are nothing more than novelty gifts.

Tell Vancouver Magazine to pull the taxidermied piglet bank from their Holiday Gift Guide 2010. The holiday season should be a time of compassion, not cruelty.

Photo credit: USDA

Stephanie Feldstein is a Change.org Editor who has been part of the animal welfare and rescue community for over a decade, and most recently worked for an environmental organization.

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