Caveat emptor.
If Latin isn't your thing, consider the English version: "Buyer, beware." Know what you're getting before you pay good money for it.
But what if you don't have the knowledge base to make an educated choice? What if the seller out-and-out deceives you? Is capitalism to be completely based on the expectation that you cannot trust the person with whom you're doing business?
If so, then this is what I have to say: FUCK CAPITALISM. Because that sort of capitalism just cost me my dearly loved piglet, Boris.
If you have been following my piglet saga, I regret to tell you that Boris is gone. Oooh, it burns, writing that. I spent most of today holding him in my arms, keeping him warm, hoping that his breathing would improve, but despite everything we tried, up to and including steaming up the bathroom and sitting it in with him snuggled against me, the pneumonia got the upper hand and he died. Not half an hour ago. I'm alternating between tears of sadness and a burning desire to go commit mayhem upon a certain pig farmer.
Boris had already earned himself a free pass from our freezer. After everything we'd done to keep him going, we figured we never could even consider eating him. We might sell him to someone else, we thought. Then we were considering whether he would make a good breeding boar. If he'd made it through today, he probably would've grown up to be a family pet. (A very LARGE family pet, granted.)
Only, he didn't make it. Well, pigs are notoriously hard to raise by hand. I've had dozens of people tell me so. And it's not as though Boris had the best of starts — pneumonia, parasites, a too-early weaning. But what has me so STEAMED is that his struggles (and those of his siblings) were UTTERLY UNNECESSARY.
The farmer who sold these pigs to us could have done any of the following to prevent this tragedy:
1) Kept his farm cleaner. Yes, it's a pig farm, and pigs like to live in filth. But by the account of my husband, it was a remarkably filthy place, even for a pig farm. According to everything I've read, Coccidia infection as well as the mycoplasmal pneumonia both can be managed by maintaining hygenic conditions, particularly among farrowing sows. And it IS possible to keep pigs relatively clean. We do it with the ones we raise here. You hose down their living quarters regularly, for one thing. If you move them from one place to another, you pressure-wash and bleach and pressure-wash again. This is the sort of thing the pig farmer we bought from did not do.
2) Not sold pigs too young for sale. It takes a certain type of callousness to remove an infant anything from its mother before it's ready. Piglets can be weaned as young as 6 weeks old. Boris and his mates were about 2 weeks old. Would it have killed the farmer to wait another month? Nope. But the fact that he did not is in large part what killed the piglets.
3) Not sold animals in poor health. All of the piglets we received were ill. It took us a few days of observation to realize this, and a couple more to realize HOW ill they were. I cannot believe that the farmer who sold them was unaware of their poor condition. I NEVER sell an animal without being fully apprised of its health (including, in the case of horses, a complete vet check and certificates of vaccination), and I would never sell an animal that was in poor health.
Of course, once he received his money, the piglets' well-being became my problem, not his. And therein lies the source of my anger. Capitalism is a system without honor. Unless you have a written contract stipulating that a seller must behave in a certain way, the seller is free to screw you over at will... and sometimes, even if there IS a contract, that happens. There is no dignity in engaging in commerce when you can't trust the person with whom you're doing business, and the "caveat emptor" motto that true capitalists live by makes it clear that you CAN'T trust anyone you do business with. It's on you, not on them, to ensure that you're not cheated. And that's wrong. It should be on BOTH parties' account. Or neither's. Wouldn't it be nice if people treated each other fairly?? Or, wouldn't it be nice if a seller had concern for the well-being of his product, and how it's used, AFTER the sale is complete as well as before? Of course... this farmer had neither, which is why I'm sitting here crying and typing and swearing all at the same time.
I can't really think clearly on this topic — I'm just too upset.