By Reni M. Valenzuela
Pork is bad for health and so it is for the country.
The global meat industry is a gargantuan market, valued approximately between $1.15 to $1.55 trillion in 2024, with growth projections that may exceed up to $2 trillion or more by 2030.
This is why the truth is plagued by and laid siege to contents/propaganda in the internet that contradict and dispute the fact that pork meat has worms that cannot be extinguished.
Pork symbolizes hades or hell. The Bible describes hell as a fiery place with worms that die not. “... hell... where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” - Mark 9:47-48
As a young reborn Christian, I had proven for myself that worms remain alive in pork meats under all conditions. With some of my churchmates in the early ‘80s, we went to a health center in YMCA Manila that was showing residents in the area some pieces of well cooked, even overcooked pork chops to prove that indeed worms in pork meats do not die.
All of us in the auditorium were asked to line up and allowed one by one to peek into the pork chops under the lenses of microscopes.
Lo and behold, I personally saw several worms, alive, running and kicking, in each of the cooked pork chops. Nandiri at nangilabot ako. This is why I avoid eating pork since then until now except during Christmas noche buena. I love to eat ham, sausage and bacon at least once a year. :)
And this is also why when people would ask me of my “secret” for looking 10 or 15 years younger than my age, I normally would answer them, “I don’t eat pork.”
Feeling young, even in my senior years now, I think I’m having the illusion that I actually stopped growing older after I reached my 22nd birthday. I always feel like I’m 22. The truth is, I feel a lot younger than how young or how younger they say I look.
The same is true with my mother and father when they were still living. Both of them were very fond of saluyot, malunggay and all the gulay in “Bahay Kubo.” My mother was 101 years old when she died two years ago.
I have just read the news that President Bongbong Marcos has signed the bloated, (still) heavily pork-ridden and cholesterol-filled 2026 national budget. And I think it is no coincidental that I am presently on the second day of my traditional out of town personal three-day “retreat” at the beginning of each year -- in a budget-low-priced hotel (as usual).
Dear officials of the land, yes, budget hotel. I am frugal to myself (even as a businessman) to be able to give more to the less fortunate.
My staff are wearing expensive, regular-priced Nike sports shoes. Mine is promo-priced cheap local brand, World Balance. But I’m prouder and joyful wearing it.
P633 billion na “pork” ang kontrobersiya o ang posibleng makulimbat at masayang po sa budget na nilagdaan mo, ginoong Pangulo. At yan ay pera ng bayan, hindi nino man sa inyong gumawa, bumusisi, nagrepaso, nagapruba, nagsingit, naglaway, ngumiti at lumagda sa naturang panukala na pondong pambansa.
I’m still full of questions even after the President vetoed almost P92.5 billion worth of “pork”/unprogrammed funds in the budget. They may grind the meat, but it is still pork -- giniling na baboy. Pork is pork whether it is chunk or ground, soft or hard, naked or shadowy, cooked or fresh, vetoed or not.
Why does the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) remain to have a huge, weird budget despite the task force having outlasted its purpose for which it was (allegedly) created? Pork po yan. Marumi. Mauuod.
The NTF-Elcac is just one of the inane creations or programs of the debauched, deranged, paranoid Duterte administration, similar to its bogus bloody drug war and its “anti-terror” law which chief aim is to red tag, harass, persecute, jail and kill activists, critics, journalists, the nobles and the idealistic youth in school campuses in order for them to be given more and bigger budget -- to pocket?
What are they trying to solve when armed local communist insurgency has long been almost solved in the country before they came into the picture? They actually have done nothing except everything to perpetuate their presence and useless, vicious, crazy existence -- for obvious reason.
Call it NTF-Elcac or any other name, dear BBM, but in the eyes of truth -- it is “pork,” plain, pure and simple.