At first, Abigail Boettcher might seem like any other county Pork Queen. Look a little closer, though, and you will see that she’s definitely not your average porcine princess.

Miss Boettcher is a vegetarian, a fact that has many Buena Vista County pork producers fuming in their Carhartts.

She officially dropped the bomb at BV County’s annual pork banquet held Feb. 8 in Alta. And, according to several people who were there, you could have heard a chop drop.

“We were shocked,” Pork Producers President Todd Sievers said. While he might not be alone in his feelings, the queen said she didn’t deceive anyone.

Boettcher said she never hid the fact that she didn’t eat meat. When handing out pork burgers at the county fair, she ate the beans and salad. When it came to discussing recipes for “the other white meat,” she would bring up other uses for the product.

That doesn’t ease the pain the jilted farmers feel, however. They’re shocked, confused and more than a little angry. The controversy has, by now, spread out of the farrowing houses and taken the entire county by storm.

Buena Vista County, home to nearly 20,000 people, has a sizable stake in the hog industry. Besides the numerous pork producers that call the northwest Iowa county “home,” Storm Lake’s IBP plant generates quite a bit of money into the city’s economy. You can’t drive more than two or three miles without seeing a feed lot or hog trailer. Obviously, this is a community that takes great pride in its pigs.

The issue has appeared on the front page and editorials of the local papers several times, and it was on the front page of The Des Moines Register last week. Even now, several weeks after the fact, it is a sore spot with producers.

Boettcher wants to go on and represent her county in the State Pork Queen contest. However, a lot of the producers aren’t so sure that she’s the right gal for the job. In fact, some of them want her head.

“Crucify her! Crucify her!” the embarrassed pig men are shouting. They feel that they have been deceived. After all, she is the girl — the daughter of a second-generation pork producer — whose No. 1 job is to promote their product, and she won’t even partake in the largest part of the pork business — chops, tenderloins, ribs, etc.

They’re angry, and there is no fury like a pork producer scorned.

However, there are some who support Boettcher. They say you can’t penalize someone because of his beliefs. They are proud of her for standing up for what she believes in, and say that she isn’t hurting anyone with her abstinence from the meat.

So, what do I think of the whole issue? On one hand, you have to admit that it takes balls of steel to stand in front of a room full of hog farmers (including your parents) and tell them that you prefer carrots to chops.

But then again there’s that whole “practice what you preach” issue.

How can you say that she is standing up for what she believes? By being a vegetarian, Boettcher is saying she doesn’t eat meat. By being pork queen, however, she is promoting the very thing she has professed not to do: eat meat.

It’s sort of a Catch-22, isn’t it?

Iowa leads the nation in pork production. Hogs are a backbone of our state’s economy. There are numerous industries that are affected by hog production. Besides all of the jobs and profit generated from the packing plants, there is hog feed to be produced, hog trailers and other equipment to be made, and hog calls for veterinarians to make.

Pigskin is used to make a variety of products, everything from clothes to footballs. Hog hair is very good for brush bristles, and hogs can be used in producing the insulin that diabetics need. The list goes on and on; pigs are very useful little critters.

But besides all of these wonderful by-products, the fact remains that the most well-known and widespread use for pigs is meat. Therefore, it only stands to reason that the most well-known representative of the industry should promote this.

I feel the pork producers have a right to be angry. While it isn’t written in the eligibility rules for the queen contest, it is sort of inferred that a pork queen love every aspect of her industry (except, perhaps, cleaning pens. Anyone who loves scooping piles of pig poop that have been baking in the hot July sun for hours needs to have her head examined).

Besides that whole meat-eating issue, there’s the fact that she embarrassed many of the producers. How many counties can you name where their queen won’t split a tenderloin with Little Miss Pigtails? “It’s ironic,” Sievers said, “but what can you do about it now?” His words echo the exasperated sentiments of many of his fellow farmers.

While I’m sure that Boettcher probably didn’t intend to cause her county this much controversy and embarrassment, the fact remains that she did. She bit the hand that feeds her, and while the damage may be done, the scars remain.

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Holly Benton is a sophomore in animal science from Early.