Just over a month ago, as part of my restaurant review for Style, I wrote about the joys of pig-keeping – and killing. Last year, we killed our pigs at home and have been enjoying the fantastic meat that came off them ever since. Friends have commented on the quality, and my chef friend was so impressed that he started making plans to keep his own pigs for his restaurant. Everyone should do it, I cheerfully wrote.

The morning after the piece appeared, someone carrying a clipboard walked up our garden path. Over a cup of tea, the man, who was employed by the local environmental health department, told us that by killing our pigs at home, we had broken the law. A little-known piece of legislation outlaws the age-old practice of slaughtering pigs on your property; any beasts must be sent to the abattoir instead. The thinking behind this nannyish bit of legislation, he explained, is to ensure that no diseased meat goes out for public consumption.

I argued that we had taken the decision to kill the pigs at home partly because it seemed by far the most humane way of doing it: one second, piggie is happily eating in the place where he has grown up; the next, he is in pig heaven, thanks to our sensitive and experienced slaughterman (who can also tell, by the way, whether or not the meat is diseased). There is none of the stress of travelling to the slaughterhouse, then lining up to be killed. Some argue that the pigs have a sense of what is going to happen to them, and the ensuing surge of adrenaline adversely affects the taste of the meat.

The man from the council agreed that nobody doubts that meat killed at home tastes better than meat from the slaughterhouse. But this is the law, and it was his responsibility to communicate it. He wasn’t going to prosecute, he said, just make sure that we knew the legal situation. When he left us, he planned to go and rap our pig-killing associates over the knuckles, too.

It seemed insane to me that we had innocently followed a traditional cottager’s means of support, pig-keeping, and given the pigs the best life and most instant death it is possible to have – and then be told we were breaking the law. This means that all our sausages, all our hams soaked in beer and molasses, all the joints and the chorizos, all our bacon and our cured cuts are illegal. We have been eating illegal pork. And we could all have been prosecuted for breaking laws governing environmental health. So, it seems that, in following a simple, sensible tradition and killing pigs in the most humane fashion possible, we are outlaws.

The other point is that nobody in this country, it seems, is allowed to experience what really good pork tastes like any more. Perhaps the succulence and flakiness of our meat was partly thanks to the instant death of the beasts. Thanks to the meddlers, we will never eat good pig again – unless we break the law.

Another reason to object to this insane law is that it attacks an ancient right and freedom. Why shouldn’t you keep and kill your own pigs if you want to? It’s a simple civil liberty, and it would be unthinkable in any other country to tamper with this right. After all, from Mexico to Vanuatu, pig-keeping and killing is part of everyday rural life.

I was further incensed when I looked up the guidelines on pig-keeping from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). They burst with hectoring pieties about animal welfare and humane slaughter, guidelines that we, alone in the country, it seems, took seriously. Defra clearly doesn’t – if it did, it wouldn’t force every British pig to the slaughterhouse. And more important, it wouldn’t permit the wholesale cruelty that goes on every day in chicken and pig factories. It’s all talk – shame on you, Defra.

There is an exemption to this law so absurd as to be hardly worth mentioning. But I will mention it, in order to provide further proof of what an ass the law can be. If I had personally killed the pigs, then I would be allowed to eat the meat, but I would not be allowed to share it with anyone else: wife, kids, friends, relatives. I mean, really. The idea that anyone is going to eat an entire pig by himself is too ridiculous to contemplate. What dozy fools come up with this rubbish?

What is happening to this country? You can’t smoke in the pub, you can’t play conkers at school, you can’t eat proper pork. Our freedoms are draining away.

Well, the whole sorry experience has motivated us to start a campaign to bring back this basic right: www.thislittlepiggystayed athome.org is the place to go to add a comment. Let’s find out how to get this crazy law changed.

Explore Food & Drink

• Gordon Ramsay

• Heston Blumenthal

• Recipes

• Wine

• Real Food

• Drinks

• Anjum Anand

• Eating Out

• Video Recipes

Times Recommends

• Top Ten most searched for recipes
• Chalet Chef 2010: the winning menus
• Gin and pomegranate jellies