Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

Pigs’ privileged status as objects of research was confirmed by the forming of a study group led by Wilhelm Zorn dedicated to increase fat and meat production in swine in the framework of Meyer’s Forschungdienst.[84] After all, according to the estimates of the statisticians from the Institute of Conjuncture Research (Institut für Konjunkturforschung),[85] pork accounted for about two thirds of Germans’ meat consumption, and bacon and lard for 30 percent of their intake of fat.[86] Now, if it was possible to think that most of the country’s needs in carbohydrates and proteins could be covered by domestic sources, by 1936 Germany was still importing 60 percent of the fats it consumed. The figure was particularly worrisome in a context of world markets closed to the Reich and of increasing difficulties of acquiring vegetable and marine oils. It is, thus, not surprising that, together with a large mobilization to increase butter production from German dairies, pigs were seen by the Four-Year Plan bureaucracy as the other available domestic source to close the gap in fats.[87] More fat from bacon and lard would also lessen the burden put on dairy production, which demanded the importing of expensive feeds such as oilcake.[88]

It is thus easy to understand the enthusiasm with the results of the experiments by Jonas Schmidt and Wilhelm Zorn that, by crossing pig body measurements and performance tests, promised clear visual rules for commercial breeders to select hogs (both Edelschwein and veredelte Landschwein) with higher fat ratios. Lengthy trunks and deep chests would help to close the national fat gap and get the country ready for war. If performance tests aimed at guaranteeing that only pigs making more out of produce of Germany’s soil were being reproduced, increasing pigs’ fat content was to root Germans in the national soil by increasing their domestic fat intake.

Zorn bluntly stated in the report of the Research Service of the Ministry of Agriculture for the years 1938–1941 that animal-breeding research was to deliver in a short time the solution for improving fat production of swine, thus decisively contributing for the nutritional independence of the Reich.[89] At a moment when there was a consensus among breeders in England and in the United States that they should develop leaner animals to stay profitable because of growing competition from fats of plant origin, betting on pigs as a source of protein, German breeders were taking the opposite path. According to the results obtained by Zorn’s and Schmidt’s teams, it was now possible to make sound selection decisions in Edelschwein and veredelte Landschwein for animals with higher fat content on the basis of external characteristics such as trunk and chest dimensions.

And selections in bloodlines of these two breeds were not the only path. No one advocated a return to the old fat German breeds to close the fats gap, since those breeds not only demanded very large periods of fattening but also consumed large amounts of feed. Such an option would have jeopardized both the effort to improve efficiency in feeding and the effort to increase pork production. There was no intention of giving away the precocity and the meat production of the modern German breeds. The other solution was therefore to cross veredelte Landschwein and Edelschwein with breeds of higher fat content, trying to keep the good properties of the first.[90] The idea was not to produce hybrid breeding animals; it was to have the first generation of hybrid swine used exclusively for fattening, not for reproduction. In this so-called Gebrauchskreuzungen (crossing for use), one took advantage of first-generation hybrid vigor and of the dominant character of the most interesting physiological properties such as strong gain from feed or fast fattening rate.[91]

Jonas Schmidt and his aides at Göttingen had been registering performance results of such first-generation crossings since 1926.[92] Particularly promising were the combinations of Edelschwein with the “old breed” hannoverschbraunschweigisches Landschwein in producing animals with both high contents of pork and lard and reasonable gains from feed performances.[93] The problem in subsequent years would be to enlarge both the number of different breeds and the number of animals involved in the experiment.[94] In spite of the limitations, the results were significant enough to be used in other institutions to align research with the priorities dictated by the Nutritional Freedom (Ernährungsfreiheit) motto of the Four-Year Plan.