Thoughts on Pigs and People

Let’s face it. I’m a city guy. Always have been, probably always will be.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t notice wild and tame life around me. From my beloved La Gata (translation: “The Cat”), to the squirrels who dig up my yard looking for acorns and my spring blooming bulbs, to the birds (most of which I cannot identify) that seem to feel comfortable in the planned chaos of my garden, to the coyotes that I know are in the neighborhood but which I never see, to the spiders that I love, but unconsciously duck away from, I am aware that these creatures have carved out existences — some comfortable, some tenuous—alongside thuggish human beings.

When I describe our species as “thuggish,” I mean that too many of us think that we own the joint. That we can clear-cut, bulldoze, drain, pave-over and irrevocably alter the planet with impunity, displacing plants, animals — even lakes and mountains — and pay no price.

That’s absurd, of course. Humans like to think of themselves — because they can write poetry and worship their many gods and create cat videos — as the highest form of life on this lonely blue speck in an incomprehensibly vast universe.

Except they don’t act like it.

An intelligent life-form, for instance, would not have caused the Sixth Mass Extinction, which is ongoing even as I write and you read this. An intelligent life-form wouldn’t foul its own nest by pumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, leading to what will soon be runaway climate change, unless we make drastic changes very soon (It’s probably already too late but, like mom, I’m trying to make everybody happy).

And an intelligent life-form would not feed itself by causing suffering to other sentient beings, including, but not limited to, cattle, chickens and pigs. In other words, an intelligent life-form would not practice factory farming.

Yet here we are.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could control our own procreation, meaning the out-of-control uptick in worldwide population? We are closing in on eight billion, which will quickly become nine. Are those sustainable numbers? Who knows? Does quality of life figure into the equation? And degradation of the earth? Or, when we say “sustainable,” are we talking about simple—and probably ugly—survival?

Consequently, conventional wisdom (or is it capitalism? I keep getting those concepts confused) tells us that raising animals by the thousands and sometimes tens of thousands in confined areas before they are slaughtered is the only way to feed our continually growing numbers.

Maybe we’re just talking about the “freedom” to eat a hamburger every day. Been there, done that. Moved on.

I have been hosting a radio show in Chicago for more than twenty years. It started as a gardening program. Seems pretty benign, doesn’t it? But here’s the problem with trying to report accurately on horticulture. Science is involved. And the science in gardening is connected to science in agriculture. Which is connected to science in raising and consuming animals. Which is connected to the science of assessing the consequences of raising and consuming massive numbers of animals in limited spaces. Which is connected to the science of climate change.

Pretty soon, you’re talking to farmers and people in necessary organizations like Crate Free Illinois and Illinois Citizens for Clean Air & Water and The Humane Society of the United States and Farm Aid, and courageous people like Jessica Chipkin, John Ikerd, Chris Petersen and Karen Hudson, and you begin to realize how seriously flawed and cruel and dangerous to our planet our system of meat production is (I’ll leave the flaws of plant production for another day).

I’m not going to inundate you with facts about the harm caused by factory farms. But it’s hard to make an argument without at least a few tidbits of reality. The Chicago Tribune, in a remarkable series of stories in 2016 (“The Price of Pork”), reported that “pollution incidents from hog confinements killed at least 492,000 fish from 2005 through 2014,” and “pig waste impaired 67 miles of the state’s rivers, creeks and waterways over that time.”

I have interviewed people whose health became compromised when factory farms moved into their communities. I have talked to people who have put their careers, their families and their very lives in danger by speaking out against Big Ag and Big Meat.

I know people who have seen their property values plummet as factory farms move into their areas.

I have watched the State of Illinois disenfranchise ordinary citizens and run roughshod over county governments in favor of the business interests of factory farms.

And, sadly, that doesn’t begin to describe the horrors that CAFOs and related operations represent to our world.

When we use gestation crates, overuse antibiotics, raise animals in unspeakable conditions (that we sometimes read about by accident, recoil from in horror and move on to something less disturbing), we have opted to check our humanity, the very thing that is supposed to separate us from those animals, at the door. We have decided to become a less-than-intelligent-life-form.

Let me be clear. You’re not personally responsible for every animal that is mistreated, every bad decision made in a moment of avarice or ignorance or weakness. But it would be helpful if we could all move in the right direction, even a little bit at a time.

If you want to bust me for being an omnivore, knock yourself out. We’re all products of our culture. I’m not going to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I eat much less meat than I did twenty years ago. I now vet it more carefully. And I continue to get better at it. That’s what I’ve learned from the smart, concerned people represented by this website and many more. And I have now made it part of my mission to spread the word of their missions.

Nobody owns the joint — that is to say, planet earth. The joint is the joint. It will survive — probably thrive — without us. We’re just along for the ride. We need to get better at making the ride better — for us and for all of the critters with which we’re sharing the back seat.