Christien Meindertsma: How pig parts make the world turn

180,086 views ・ 2010-09-20

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:16
Hello. I would like to start my talk
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with actually two questions, and the first one is:
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How many people here actually eat pig meat?
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Please raise your hand --
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oh, that's a lot.
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And how many people have actually seen
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a live pig producing this meat?
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In the last year?
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00:34
In the Netherlands -- where I come from --
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you actually never see a pig, which is really strange,
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because, on a population of 16 million people,
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we have 12 million pigs.
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And well, of course, the Dutch can't eat all these pigs.
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They eat about one-third, and the rest is exported
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to all kinds of countries in Europe and the rest of the world.
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A lot goes to the U.K., Germany.
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And what I was curious about --
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because historically, the whole pig would be used up until the last bit
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so nothing would be wasted --
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01:01
and I was curious to find out
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if this was actually still the case.
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01:05
And I spent about three years researching.
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01:07
And I followed this one pig
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with number "05049,"
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01:11
all the way up until the end
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and to what products it's made of.
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01:15
And in these years, I met all kinds people
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like, for instance, farmers and butchers, which seems logical.
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01:20
But I also met aluminum mold makers,
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01:23
ammunition producers
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and all kinds of people.
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01:27
And what was striking to me
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is that the farmers actually had no clue
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what was made of their pigs,
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but the consumers -- as in us --
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had also no idea
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of the pigs being in all these products.
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So what I did is,
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I took all this research
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and I made it into a -- well, basically it's a product catalog of this one pig,
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and it carries a duplicate of his ear tag
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on the back.
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And it consists of seven chapters --
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the chapters are skin, bones, meat, internal organs,
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blood, fat and miscellaneous.
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02:00
(Laughter)
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02:02
In total,
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they weigh 103.7 kilograms.
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02:06
And to show you how often you actually
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meet part of this pig in a regular day,
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I want to show you some images of the book.
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02:15
You probably start the day with a shower.
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02:17
So, in soap, fatty acids
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made from boiling pork bone fat
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are used as a hardening agent,
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but also for giving it a pearl-like effect.
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02:26
Then if you look around you in the bathroom,
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you see lots more products
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like shampoo, conditioner,
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anti-wrinkle cream, body lotion,
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but also toothpaste.
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02:37
Then, so, before breakfast,
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you've already met the pig so many times.
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Then, at breakfast, the pig that I followed,
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the hairs off the pig or proteins from the hairs off the pig
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were used as an improver of dough.
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(Laughter)
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Well, that's what the producer says: it's "improving the dough,
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of course."
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02:57
In low-fat butter, or actually in many low-fat products,
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when you take the fat out, you actually take the taste and the texture out.
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So what they do is they put gelatin back in,
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in order to retain the texture.
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03:09
Well, when you're off to work, under the road or under the buildings that you see,
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there might very well be cellular concrete,
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which is a very light kind of concrete
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that's actually got proteins from bones inside
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and it's also fully reusable.
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03:22
In the train brakes -- at least in the German train brakes --
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there's this part of the brake
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that's made of bone ash.
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03:28
And in cheesecake and all kinds of desserts,
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like chocolate mousse, tiramisu, vanilla pudding,
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03:33
everything that's cooled in the supermarket,
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there's gelatin to make it look good.
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Fine bone china -- this is a real classic.
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Of course, the bone in fine-bone china
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gives it its translucency
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and also its strength,
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in order to make these really fine shapes,
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like this deer.
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In interior decorating, the pig's actually quite there.
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It's used in paint for the texture,
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but also for the glossiness.
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In sandpaper, bone glue
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is actually the glue between the sand and the paper.
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And then in paintbrushes,
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hairs are used because, apparently, they're very suitable for making paintbrushes
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because of their hard-wearing nature.
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04:13
I was not planning on showing you any meat
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because, of course, half the book's meat
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04:17
and you probably all know what meats they are.
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04:19
But I didn't want you to miss out on this one,
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04:21
because this, well, it's called "portion-controlled meat cuts."
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04:24
And this is actually sold
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in the frozen area of the supermarket.
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04:28
And what it is -- it's actually steak.
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04:30
So, this is sold as cow,
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but what happens when you slaughter a cow --
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at least in industrial factory farming --
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they have all these little bits of steak left
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that they can't actually sell as steak,
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so what they do is they glue them all together
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with fibrin from pig blood
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into this really large sausage,
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then freeze the sausage, cut it in little slices
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and sell those as steak again.
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04:54
And this also actually happens with tuna and scallops.
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05:00
So, with the steak, you might drink a beer.
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05:02
In the brewing process, there's lots of cloudy elements in the beer,
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so to get rid of these cloudy elements,
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what some companies do
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is they pour the beer through a sort of gelatin sieve
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in order to get rid of that cloudiness.
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05:14
This actually also goes for wine as well as fruit juice.
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05:19
There's actually a company in Greece
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that produces these cigarettes
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that actually contain hemoglobin from pigs in the filter.
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And according to them,
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this creates an artificial lung in the filter.
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05:30
(Laughter)
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So, this is actually a healthier cigarette.
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05:35
(Laughter)
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Injectable collagen -- or, since the '70s, collagen from pigs --
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has been used for injecting into wrinkles.
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05:42
And the reason for this is that pigs are actually quite close to human beings,
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so the collagen is as well.
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05:49
Well, this must be the strangest thing I found.
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This is a bullet coming from
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a very large ammunition company in the United States.
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And while I was making the book,
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I contacted all the producers of products
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because I wanted them to send me the real samples
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and the real specimens.
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So I sent this company an email
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saying, "Hello. I'm Christien. I'm doing this research.
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And can you send me a bullet?"
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(Laughter)
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And well, I didn't expect them to even answer my email.
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But they answered
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and they said, "Why, thank you for your email. What an interesting story.
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Are you in anyway related to the Dutch government?"
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I thought that was really weird,
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as if the Dutch government sends emails to anyone.
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(Laughter)
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So, the most beautiful thing I found --
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at least what I think is the most beautiful -- in the book, is this heart valve.
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It's actually a very low-tech
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and very high-tech product at the same time.
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The low-tech bit is that it's literally a pig's heart valve
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mounted in the high-tech bit,
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which is a memory metal casing.
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And what happens is this can be implanted into a human heart
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without open heart surgery.
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And once it's in the right spot,
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they remove the outer shell,
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and the heart valve, well, it gets this shape
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and at that moment it starts beating, instantly.
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It's really a sort of magical moment.
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So this is actually a Dutch company,
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so I called them up, and I asked,
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"Can I borrow a heart valve from you?"
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And the makers of this thing were really enthusiastic.
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So they were like, "Okay, we'll put it in a jar for you with formalin,
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and you can borrow it."
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Great -- and then I didn't hear from them for weeks,
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so I called,
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and I asked, "What's going on with the heart valve?"
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And they said, "Well the director of the company
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decided not to let you borrow this heart valve,
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because want his product
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to be associated with pigs."
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07:38
(Laughter)
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Well, the last product from the book that I'm showing you is renewable energy --
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actually, to show that my first question,
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if pigs are still used up until the last bit, was still true.
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Well it is, because everything that can't be used for anything else
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is made into a fuel
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that can be used as renewable energy source.
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In total, I found 185 products.
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And what they showed me
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is that, well, firstly,
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it's at least to say odd
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that we don't treat these pigs
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as absolute kings and queens.
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And the second, is that we actually don't have a clue
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of what all these products that surround us are made of.
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08:18
And you might think I'm very fond of pigs,
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but actually -- well, I am a little bit --
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but I'm more fond
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of raw materials in general.
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And I think that, in order to take better care
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of what's behind our products --
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so, the livestock, the crops, the plants,
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the non-renewable materials,
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but also the people that produce these products --
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the first step would actually be to know that they are there.
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08:43
Thank you very much.
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08:45
(Applause)
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