Revenges of the CAFO Pigs

Li Way Lee

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-89779-0_12

Behavioral Economics and Bioethics pp 95-100 | Cite as

Revenges of the CAFO Pigs

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Li Way LeeEmail author

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First Online: 12 April 2018

Part of the Palgrave Advances in Behavioral Economics book series (PABE)

Abstract

People raise pigs in concentrated-animals-feeding operations (CAFOs). On surface, people’s dominance appears to be absolute and complete. But the dominance comes at the cost of declines in people’s health and longevity and fertility. I show that there is justice coming out of CAFOs after all.

Keywords

Interspecies justice Factory farming CAFO

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Appendix

A Formal Model of the Community of Pigs and People

What will happen in this community of pigs and people over time? Will their populations grow steadily? Or will they become extinct? It is impossible to tell from Fig. 1. So let’s look at a special case instead. Let the letter Q stand for pigs, and the letter Y for people, and t for time:

Q: pigs
Y: people
t: time

The community of people and pigs is described by two equations of motion:

$$\frac{dY}{dt} = a_{1} Y - a_{2} \frac{Q}{Y}$$

(1)

$$\frac{dQ}{dt} = b_{1} Y - b_{2} Q$$

(2)

The a’s and the b’s correspond to the arrows in Fig. 1:

arrow 1 = a₁ rate of natural growth of people

arrow 2 = a₂ rate of death caused by diet with pork

arrow 3 = b₁ rate of growth in demand for pork

arrow 4 = b₂ rate of death of pigs due to pathogens

This community will become stable eventually, with populations equal to:

$$Y = \frac{{a_{2} b_{1} }}{{a_{1} b_{2} }}$$

(3)

$$Q = \frac{{a_{2} \left( {b_{1} } \right)^{2} }}{{a_{1} \left( {b_{2} } \right)^{2} }}$$

(4)

Note that the pig population always moves in lock steps with the people population whenever their environment is perturbed. Divide Q by Y and get:

$${Q \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {Q {Y = {{b_{1} } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{b_{1} } {b_{2} }}} \right. \kern-0pt} {b_{2} }}}}} \right. \kern-0pt} {Y = {{b_{1} } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{b_{1} } {b_{2} }}} \right. \kern-0pt} {b_{2} }}}}$$

(5)

This ratio—the number of pigs per person—measures the pork content of people’s diet. This ratio is the key to understanding pigs’ ability to revenge for the cruelty of CAFOs.

References

Akhtar, Aysha. Animals and Public Health: Why Treating Animals Better Is Critical to Human Welfare. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackorby, Charles, and David Donaldson. “Pigs and Guinea Pigs: A Note on the Ethics of Animal Exploitation.” Economic Journal, November 1992, pp. 1345–1369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Matthew, and Yew-Kwang Ng. “Population Dynamics and Animal Welfare: Issues Raised by the Culling of Kangaroos in Puckapunyal.” Social Choice Welfare, 27, 2006, pp. 407–422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imhoff, Daniel, ed. CAFO: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. Foundation for Deep Ecology, Sausalito, CA, in collaboration with Earth Aware, San Rafael, CA, 2010.Google Scholar
Serpell, James. In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human–Animal Relationships, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar

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Li Way Lee
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1.Wayne State UniversityDetroitUSA

Revenges of the CAFO Pigs

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