Part I: Evolution, Taxonomy, and Domestication56
Thus, while factory farmers are aware of ways to improve
pigs-as-pork welfare in factory farms, animal welfare activist
case studies ‘speaking for the pigs’ argue with conviction that cost
considerations and the profit motive nearly everywhere have nul-
lified any widespread implementation of these ‘best practices’.
And so, in response to question: (1) ‘How much space and
time do pigs need to be pigs?’, the ethical answer would be ‘Much
more than they are allocated by the cruel and frugal forces of
economic growth ideology at this time in history’; and to ques-
tion (2) ‘How much space and time do pigs need to be pork?’, the
same forces would argue ‘As little as it takes for our factory farms
to maximize efficiency and profitability.’
Such instrumental-rational responses having become
entrenched as the ‘absolutist space and time logic of the
Anthropocene’ are, however, rendered nonsensical in the con-
text of post-modernity’s fast-evolving relativist space–time
relations. Animal welfare activism in the Internet Age reaches
an unprecedented (in size and diversity) audience of dysra-
tional/relativist thinkers. Pork-producing factory farms as we
know them are already verging on the provocative absurdity
depicted in Sue Coe’s dystopian artistic renditions.Summary
This article has argued – drawing on personal observations in
the field, and deploying models of East Asian Neo-Confucian
cosmology and the Western experience of changing pig–human
relations in agro-ecosystems ranging from the Neolithic to
the present Anthropocene – that pigs were perceived and
respected as-pigs prior to the Anthropocene, in contrast with
their being perceived exclusively as-pork with the onset of the
Anthropocene. Pigs perceived as-pigs in the relational space–
time of pre-Anthropocene agro-ecosystems became pigs per-
ceived as-pork in absolute space–time that coincided with
the onset of Anthropocene agro-ecosystems culminating in
Industrial-Age mass pork-producing factory farms.Assuming Zygmunt Bauman is on to something with his
concept of ‘liquid modernity’, the emergence of relative space–
time convergence at this stage of the Anthropocene allows that
the chances of pigs flying and/or human’s changing their atti-
tudes about Sus scrofa from pigs-as-pork back to pigs-as-pigs
are about equally absurd – as well as equally possible.Conclusion: If Pigs Could Fly . . . What Then?
I have argued in this chapter that pigs ‘as-pigs’ no less than
humans ‘as-humans’ require living space to achieve healthy
productive lives. Pigs without living space in factory farms
at this stage of the Anthropocene continue to live in an
unhealthy welfare state. If pigs could fly, would their lives be
worth living?
What could be more provocatively absurd and thus post-
modern than flying pigs? Humans have conjured up this flying
pig scenario for ages. The proposition ‘If pigs could fly . . .’ is usu-
ally considered an adynaton (the exaggeration of an impossible
event). However, at present, pigs do fly when they accompany
humans into airspace.
The phrase can also be construed to be a counterfactual
conjecture (an unprecedented event, but nevertheless within
the realm of possibility). As a counterfactual, the possibility of
pigs-as-pork taking flight from the severe conditions of their
restricted confinement in a factory farm is not utterly foreclosed –
although escape into airspace by a pig of its own accord as
envisioned in Figure 5.6 remains far-fetched at the present time.
This chapter has interpreted the long history of pig–human
relations documented by Albarella (2007) as beginning well in
relational space–time, but evolving badly for pigs during abso-
lute space and time. That relationship viewed in retrospect has
been both remarkable and paradoxical. At present, in post-
modern relativist space anything is possible – but few pigs are
as yet escaping the hellacious conditions of their living deaths in
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