There were no bumper stickers on my car, and my clothes and hairstyle were carefully chosen to give no indication that I might have philosophical leanings other than those that were common in the area. I told the farmer matter-of-factly that I was a researcher writing about animal agriculture, and asked if he'd mind speaking with me for a few minutes so that I could have the benefit of his knowledge. In response, he grunted a few words that I could not decipher, but that I gathered meant I could ask him questions and he would show me around.
I was, at this point, not very happy about the situation, and this feeling did not improve when we entered one of the warehouses that housed his pigs. In fact, my distress increased, for I was immediately struck by what I can only call an overpowering olfactory experience. The place reeked in a way you would not believe of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and other noxious gases that were the products of the animals’ wastes. These, unfortunately, seemed to have been piling up inside the building for far too long.
As nauseating as the stench was for me, I wondered what it must be like for the animals. The cells that detect scent are known as ethmoidal cells. Pigs, like dogs, have nearly 200 times the concentration of these cells in their noses as humans do. In a natural setting, they are able, while rooting around in the dirt, to detect the scent of an edible root through the earth itself.
Given any kind of a chance, pigs will never soil their own nests, for they are actually quite clean animals, despite the reputation we have unfairly given them. But here they had no contact with the earth, and their noses were beset by the unceasing odor of their own urine and feces multiplied 1,000 times by the accumulated wastes of the other pigs unfortunate enough to be caged in that warehouse. I was in the building for only a few minutes, and the longer I remained there, the more desperately I wanted to leave. But the pigs were prisoners there, barely able to take a single step, forced to endure this stench, and almost completely immobile, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and with no time off, I can assure you, for holidays.
The man who ran the place was—I'll give him this—kind enough to answer my questions, which were mainly about the drugs he used to handle the problems that are fairly common in factory pigs today. But my sentiments about him and his farm were not becoming any warmer. It didn't help when, in response to a particularly loud squealing from one of the pigs, he delivered a sudden and threatening kick to the bars of its cage, causing a loud “clang” to reverberate through the warehouse and leading to screaming from many of the pigs.
Because I found it increasingly difficult to hide my distress, it crossed my mind that I should tell the man what I thought of the conditions in which he kept his pigs, but then I thought better of it. This was a man, it was obvious, with whom there was no point in arguing.
After perhaps fifteen minutes, I'd had enough and was preparing to leave. Moreover, I felt sure he was looking forward to getting rid of me. But then something happened, something that changed my life forever—and, as it turns out, his too. It began when his wife came out from the farmhouse and cordially invited me to stay for dinner.
The pig farmer grimaced when his wife spoke, but he dutifully turned to me and announced: “The wife would like you to stay for dinner.” He always called her “the wife,” by the way, which led me to deduce that he was not, apparently, on the leading edge of feminist thought in the country today.
I don't know whether you have ever done something without having a clue why, and to this day I couldn't tell you what prompted me to do it, but I said “Yes, I'd be delighted.” And stay for dinner I did, although I didn't eat the pork they served. The excuse I gave was that my doctor was worried about my cholesterol. I didn't say that I was a vegetarian, or that my cholesterol was 125.
I tried to be a polite and appropriate dinner guest. I didn't want to say anything that might lead to any kind of disagreement. The couple (and their two sons, who were also at the table) were, I could see, being nice to me, giving me dinner and all, and it was gradually becoming clear to me that, along with all the rest of it, they could be, in their way, somewhat decent people. I asked myself whether, if they were traveling in my town and I had chanced to meet them, I would have invited them to dinner. Not likely, I knew—not likely at all. Yet here they were, being as hospitable to me as they could. Yes, I had to admit it. Much as I detested how the pigs were treated, this pig farmer wasn't actually the reincarnation of Adolph Hitler. At least, not at the dinner table.
Of course, I still knew that, if we were to scratch the surface, we'd no doubt find ourselves in great conflict and, because that was not a direction in which I wanted to go, as the meal went along I sought to keep things on an even and consistent keel. Perhaps they sensed it too, for among us, we managed to see that the conversation remained completely and resolutely shallow.
We talked about the weather, about the Little League games in which their two sons played, and then, of course, about how the weather might affect the Little League games. We were actually doing rather well at keeping the conversation superficial and far from any topic around which conflict might occur. Or so I thought. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, the man pointed at me forcefully with his finger, and snarled in a voice that I must say truly frightened me: “Sometimes I wish you animal rights people would just drop dead.”
How on Earth he knew I had any affinity to animal rights I will never know—I had painstakingly avoided any mention of any such thing—but I do know that my stomach tightened immediately into a knot. To make matters worse, at that moment his two sons leapt from the table, tore into the den, slammed the door behind them, and turned on the TV, cranking up the volume presumably to drown out what was to follow. At the same instant, his wife nervously picked up some dishes and scurried into the kitchen. As I watched the door close behind her and heard the water begin to run, I had a sinking sensation. They had—there was no mistaking it—left me alone with him.
I was, to put it bluntly, terrified. Under the circumstances, a wrong move now could be disastrous. Trying to center myself, I tried to find some semblance of inner calm by watching my breath, but this I could not do—for the very simple reason that there wasn't any to watch.
“What are they saying that's so upsetting to you?” I said finally, pronouncing the words carefully and distinctly, trying not to show my terror. I was trying very hard at that moment to disassociate myself from the animal rights movement, a force in our society of which he, evidently, was not overly fond.
“They accuse me of mistreating my stock,” he growled.
“Why would they say a thing like that?” I answered, knowing full well, of course, why they would, but thinking mostly about my own survival. His reply, to my surprise, while angry, was actually quite articulate. He told me precisely what animal rights groups were saying about operations like his, and exactly why they were opposed to his way of doing things. Then, without pausing, he launched into a tirade about how he didn't like being called cruel, and they didn't know anything about the business he was in, and why couldn't they mind their own business.
As he spoke, the knot in my stomach relaxed, because it was becoming clear—and I was glad of it—that he meant me no harm, but just needed to vent. Part of his frustration, it seemed, was that, even though he didn't like doing some of the things he did to the animals—cooping them up in such small cages, using so many drugs, taking the babies away from their mothers so quickly after their births—he didn't see that he had any choice. He would be at a disadvantage and unable to compete economically if he didn't do things that way. This is how it's done today, he told me, and he had to do it too. He didn't like it, but he liked even less being blamed for doing what he had to do in order to feed his family.
As it happened, I had, just the week before, been at a much larger hog operation, where I learned that it was part of their business strategy to try to put people like my host out of business by going full-tilt into the mass production of assembly-line pigs so that small farmers wouldn't be able to keep up.
