While the comparison between a pig and an inanimate object like a dented can may be heartless, it may not be far off from actual consumer behavior; we tend to implicitly treat farmed animals’ lives as if they’re as disposable as a dented can of beans or tomato sauce.
KENNY TORRELLA: Putting a dollar amount to the value of one human life is a crude exercise, so let’s leave it to practitioners of the dismal science: In 2016, economists at the Environmental Protection Agency put it at around $10 million (at least for one American life). The number has come about through decades of weighing the cost of government regulations against the number of lives those rules could save. (There’s no one figure here — in 2016 the USDA, for instance, said you’re worth a measly $8.9 million.)
We don’t have an equivalent yardstick to measure the intrinsic value of one animal’s life, but some have tried. Canadians say — at least in surveys — that they’d pay $508 per household to protect the nation’s 15,000 polar bears, valuing each one around $420,000. Veterinarian malpractice lawsuits due to the death of an animal have resulted in settlements ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, while in 2006 a California county was ordered to pay out nearly $1 million to a Hells Angels motorcycle club after police killed three of their dogs during a raid. Federal and state government agencies spent $1.5 billion in 2016 to protect some 1,300 endangered and threatened plant and animal species.
But for many animals alive today — farmed animals who are raised to be slaughtered and sold on the market — we only know of their commercial value. And during a recent criminal trial we learned the commercial value of one piglet: $42.20… The trial centered on two activists with the group Direct Action Everywhere, who in 2017 entered a Utah factory farm owned by Smithfield Foods at night to get footage of pigs in gestation crates — crates so narrow the pigs are unable to turn around. While on the farm, they encountered two visibly sick piglets…
So, Hsiung and his fellow activists took them out of the farm and handed them over to an animal sanctuary that treated them. The piglet heist set off a multi-state investigation by local law enforcement and approximately eight FBI agents, and Hsiung and the other defendant were ultimately charged by Utah prosecutors with felony burglary and misdemeanor theft. They faced years in prison if convicted — but in early October, a jury of their peers acquitted the activists on all charges…
The piglets’ commercial value of $42.20 each was determined by the prosecution using a USDA standard market price index, which would presume the animals were healthy. But because they were sick, due in part to the unsanitary conditions they were in, the piglets were worth next to nothing, according to the animal sanctuary that took them in. That’s because, the sanctuary owner said, both piglets had diarrhea, a disease liability for Smithfield Foods, and that the veterinary care required would’ve cost the company hundreds of dollars…
The prosecution in the case went so far as to argue that because it’s unlawful to steal dented cans from a supermarket, it’s also unlawful to rescue two sick piglets. Theft is theft, even of damaged goods, which is what the piglets were to Smithfield…
While the comparison between a pig and an inanimate object like a dented can may be heartless, it may not be far off from actual consumer behavior; we tend to implicitly treat farmed animals’ lives as if they’re as disposable as a dented can of beans or tomato sauce. Just look at our food waste crisis: The meat, dairy, and eggs from over 35 billion land and sea animals are thrown away each year in the US, and over one-third of that happens in our homes. The prosecution’s comparison was discomfiting, but he was really just saying the quiet part out loud…
Reducing the suffering of billions of factory-farmed animals is so hard in large part because overcoming human nature is so hard; most people, when given the choice, will choose cheap, conventional meat over the more expensive organic variety (or plant-based versions, for that matter). That’s true even if they’re opposed to factory farming and have the means to spend more on food. Yet that meat isn’t magically cheap; animals pay for it with their suffering.
It’s also hard to override how we categorize animals, either as companions, wildlife, food, or pests. When groups like Direct Action Everywhere trespass onto farms, document cruel conditions, rescue two piglets, and attract a ton of media attention with it all, they’re trying to shift pigs and other animals from the “food” to “companion” category. To Smithfield Foods and Utah prosecutors, that’s likely the real threat they pose — not the theft of $84.40 worth of property.
Their activism is the slow, grinding work of changing cultural norms — to shift the value of a farmed animal from commercial to intrinsic. That will take decades, if not centuries, if it ever even pans out. Meanwhile, there is a more short-term path to raise the value of farmed animals’ lives, or at least their welfare. SOURCE…
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