Revenges of the CAFO Pigs

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.

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.