Well handled and very informative post.

A friend of mine is a perfusionist (he runs the artificial heart and lungs that circulate the blood during open-heart surgeries) and has developed several new drugs to preserve hearts so they can be transported much farther between donors and recipients. In some cases he's more than quadrupled the time a heart can spend in transport. All of this is possible because of research conducted on pigs, which have hearts very similar to humans. Because every experimental surgery involves ultimately killing two pigs, he's taken to referring to himself as "The Pol Pot of pigs." I guess you develop a dark sense of humor in that line of work.

One day his research facility re-located to a new place directly across the street. This was in a major metropolitan area, and his team had to march these pigs across the road one at a time. I guess the animal rights folks got wind of it and staged a huge protest, tying up that section of the city for hours.

I guess none of them had eaten pork before, or needed a heart transplant.