Episode 30 New Zealand Pig TransplantsHello and welcome to Jay Wont darts podcast, this is episode 30, about Living Cells Technology, testing on apparently Disease Free pigs near Invercargill, where I live.My intro was from a 60 minutes episode, talking about people who eat less willingly, and appear to live longer. A little history about the Auckland Island pigs.The Auckland Islands are some sub Antarctic islands, Auckland Island is the main island from the group of Auckland Islands. The Auckland Islands are about 500 kilometres south of Invercargill, where I live.The islands are quite beautiful looking, its mostly shrubs and rock from what I can see on wikipedia, but I think it has a lot of forest too. The pigs were released onto Auckland Island in 1807, as a source of food for whalers and shipwreck survivors, they were like living emergency rations for any people who needed food. Pretty dark huh? Living in paradise, all alone, just in case some people crash a boat into a rock, they can swim to your island and eat you. For over a hundred years, the pigs were left alone. They basically became a separate breed of pigs, now called the Auckland Island pig. In more recent times, the pigs were judged as an introduced species, they didnt belong on Auckland Island, and they had been eating too many of the plants, and had supposedly been squashing birds eggs, I dont see how this is a big problem to humanity, but DOC and other wildlife groups in New Zealand did. 12th of January, 1999, a party of volunteers left from Bluff, a port town very close to Invercargill. They returned back on the 23rd, with seventeen pigs, including some pregnant sows. The pigs had been lower in number than expected, and were hard to find, forest covered the area they were in, the only way to find them was to use trained dogs to find and hold the pigs. The hunters would then tie their legs and jaws shut, and the pigs were carried back to the base camp where they were put into cages. The site I'm reading from, rarebreeds.co.nz, in the source notes, says that injuries happened, (not always to the pigs!). So, 17 pigs were rescued, and according to the 3news page, the rest were killed by DOC, for being an introduced species, they had to die according to our Department of Conservation. Department of Culling sounds more accurate to me.The 17 pigs who were "rescued from auckland islands" as the media have reported, were moved to Invercargill. Rescued? from paradise? Taken to a secret location near Invercargill? It was found the Auckland Island pig is basically disease free, The Southland Times newspaper here often calls them "disease free pigs". They have been biocertified, acceptable for animal to human transplants. There is now a company setting up Auckland Island pig farms around Invercargill, theres one currently one building that has just opened, the location is kept secret I believe. The name of the company is Living Cell Technologies, they will handle breeding the pigs and extracting cells from the pigs, to be used in people.I should mention now, anything I say from now on is pretty much just my opinion, what I think based on what I've found from other sources. I asked for information from Living cell Technologies, and also from Mayor of Invercargill Tim Shadbolt, because I honestly dont know what is going to happen inside the Pig Farms. Tim Shadbolt, our Mayor, is a big supporter of the pigs being bred, the amount of money being made in Southland is mentioned as being billions of dollars. I wish Living Cell or Mayor Shadbolt had taken up my offer to appear on this episode of my podcast, because I honestly want to know whats going to happen, instead you just get to hear me coming up with crazy ideas. Living Cell didnt get back to me, but I got a text reply from the Mayors office.Living Cell is going to use liver cells from the pigs, for people with Diabetes Type One, pig cells will be injected into people and they will help the per