Ham on the run

There are times when I forget just how big and varied a country this is. But then, when I read about warnings like this, it jogs my memory:

Authorities in a West Virginia county are warning residents not to eat any wayward pigs they find after five medicated swine escaped from an overturned truck.

Frank Chapman of the Putnam County Office of Emergency Services said the pigs still missing after the Oct. 15 crash on Route 34 were "heavily medicated and could pose a health risk if found and slaughtered for their meat," the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

Chapman said he did not know exactly what medications the pigs had been given but antibiotics may have been among them.

"If they've been dosed recently, there could be a health risk," he told the Charleston Gazette. "We were just told by the company that they had been medicated."

I'm just saying that here in suburban Southern California, if a bunch of farm animals escape from an overturned truck, they don't immediately issue a warning telling us not to butcher and eat them.