The Case That Broke David’s Inbox

In an episode dedicated to our pig friends, Sarah and David are joined by two ...

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In an episode dedicated to our pig friends, Sarah and David are joined by two guests from The Humane Society of the United States: Vice President for Farm Animal Protection Josh Balk and Chief Counsel Jonathan Lovvorn. Josh offers insight into fight against animal cruelty and Jonathan, who chaired a defense of California’s pig farming regulations before the Supreme Court this Wednesday, discusses whether the courts can (and should) resolve moral questions.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Brent Hood

    It took me awhile to get to this podcast. I’m usually listening within a day or two of a release, but I was hesitant to go into this one. So, I’m late listening and now late to comment.

    Why was I anxious?

    I have spent 22 years in the food business, the BIG food business to be precise. For 13 of those years, I oversaw food safety and quality in pork slaughter facilities in California, Nebraska, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. For a couple years, I had responsibility for on the farm programs for group housing sows and antibiotic free pork programs. My entire adult life is made possible by the raising and slaughtering of pigs.

    At present, I work in California as director of quality and process control for two plants making millions of pounds of salami (made from pork).

    There have been times in my career I would have labeled the guests as existential enemies bent on ending my career. I’m still suspect that their goal is merely humane treatment of animals. Rather, it is the first step in the real goal of ending animal agriculture entirely. Over the years I’ve learned that bacon is more powerful than the vegetarian and vegan movements, so I don’t lose sleep over that part, but still, I remain suspicious.

    Anyway, I listened and came out in relative calm. If arguing we shouldn’t be cruel to animals, then I’m on board. On the other hand, characterizing all the animal agriculture industry as knowingly and consistently subjecting animals to cruelty makes me defensive. David often talks on other podcasts about defining whole groups by the outliers. There are always outliers. There are going to be incidents of animal cruelty. My annoyance is equating egregious animal abuse with gestation crates; saying that placing a sow in a crate is the same as beating her with a metal rod.

    On the matter of crates, there are two crating systems and they get confused. Gestation crates are used during and after artificial insemination. There is a window of time after AI when the fertilized egg implants in the uterus wall. This is a tricky time and gestation crates improve the likelihood of success by keeping the sow stationary and undisturbed. These are the crates people think about when thinking about animal welfare. The other crates are for farrowing. These crates protect newborn piglets from their mothers. A fully grown sow is a large animal weighing hundreds of pounds. She can kill her entire litter by laying on top of them. The farrowing crate, which is more of a big fork, protects the babies. As they grow the crate opens wider and before long everyone is free to wander.

    Farrowing crates are a necessity. To ban farrowing crates is to suffocate untold piglets through happenstance and accident.

    Gestation crates, on the other hand, are largely unnecessary and without argument could be used for less time even if not eliminated. It is possible to group house sows successfully and have equally good economic outcomes. It is not easy. Converting sow farms to group housing is expensive. Feeding systems must be altered to keep alpha females from eating all the food. Herds must be monitored for fighting and bullying. Sows must be protected from other sows, a truth whether sows are in outside pens in Texas, wild in the hills of Arkansas, or in a group housing facility in Indiana. This takes money. This takes time. This takes training. You’ll note that many companies have promised to convert to cage free and they push back their completion dates regularly. They didn’t realize the commitment of time and money either.

    This takes me to the Justice’s questions about labeling and David and Sarah’s comments about tracking where pork goes. Tracking hogs and bacon is incredibly hard. The entire supply chain from farm to fork must be segregated to accomplish getting bacon to California that meets the Prop 12 requirements. This requires dedicate sow farms, finishing farms, slaughter and fabrication facilities, and labels (lots and lots of labels). Much like group housing, it can be done but its harder and more expensive.

    So far, the market has not required these expenses. The people of California and our reprehensible proposition system have decided to create the market that didn’t previously exist. There will be more demand than supply. There will be price increases.

    This is where I offer my final thought. Prop 12 is a bad law not because it creates a false market and increases prices on pork or because it may violate the dormant commerce clause; it’s a bad law because it only addresses fresh pork and bacon. Excluded from the requirements are any fully cooked, ready to eat or processed pork products. A McDonald’s sausage patty – exempt. A hot dog – exempt. An Italian dry salami – exempt. If the defendants position is that California can enforce a moral requirement on other states, what is the moral argument? Why is fresh pork immoral, while hot dogs are not?

    My facility will bring in millions of pounds of fresh pork into the state of California, turn it into an assortment of salami products and not worry for one second about how the sows were raised. Meanwhile the people working hard every day to make that product, disproportionately of ethnic backgrounds the tend to buy fresh pork at Mexican and Asian grocery markets, will pay the extra price until the supply chain catches up with the demands of the California law.

    I’m no expert on the dormant commerce clause, but I’m willing to call myself a pork expert. There will be a cost. Furthermore, there is no moral standing by the state of California if it doesn’t apply the law equally across all pork products. Indeed, it seems immoral to raise the costs on those that can least afford it to satisfy an act of mere theater on animal welfare.Expand full commentShow lessShow less

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    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      I learned a lot reading this post but maybe most fascinating is that this won’t apply to non-fresh pork products which could have fascinating market effects on what people buy. Hot dogs, it sounds like, are going to be dirt cheap compared to pork chops.

      Thanks for taking the time to explain all of this.

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  2. Jdpattie

    Re: the pigs...

    I was disappointed with an aspect of Josh Balk's tactics that I find inconsistent and selectively (un)generous. I'm on board with the idea that most people, most of the time, would rather see animals treated relatively well. I also found his "big tent" approach (not caring about the politics of people he's trying to include in the anti-cruelty movement) both refreshingly positive and probably strategically savvy. However, the generosity he's willing to give to those on the "demand" side (i.e. the world of animal consumers), he's seemingly unwilling to give to the "supply" side (i.e. farmers).

    He cited an Iowa State study that he claims concludes "it actually is more affordable for producers to raise pigs without confining them to these tiny cages..."

    So according to him, the supply side possibilities are:

    1. IA State is correct, but farmers are unaware that it's more affordable to get rid of the cages
    2. Farmers and/or IA State are mistaken, and tiny cages are a more affordable production method
    3. IA State is correct Farmers believe that it is more affordable to raise pigs without confining them to tiny cages, but they - unlike everyone else who's invited into his tent - just enjoy being cruel to pigs and apparently are literally willing to pay extra to do it

    And suprisingly, he seems to take #3 as the most likely, because when David asked him about the economics, he only responded with the IA State study presented as fact, and didn't offer up the possibility that farmers might not have read the study.

    Another possibility that I'm surprised Sarah didn't bring up (given her aversion to opinion polls), is that the referenda are misleading; no doubt it's easy to answer "be nice to pigs" on a ballot, questionnaire, or survey, but when it's time to buy pork, people actually go for the cheaper (caged) version.

    So I think that the guest's strategy ought not to be to convince the demand side to beat up the supply side, but if he believes the IA state study is correct, then just convince farmers that they would be economically better off not raising pigs in cages, and this whole topic would go away on its own.

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    Michael Falciani

    I was going back and forth between smoking baby backs or brisket this weekend. After this niche podcast I'm all in with the baby back...maybe even St. Louis cut since there's a little more flavor with the additional fat.

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  4. Nrpandolfo

    Does AO have a discord channel?

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  5. Avatar photo
    Tracy

    I became a vegan for health reasons. Only after that was I exposed to the ideas that animals are treated cruelly so that humans can eat more meat than anyone needs (not exaggerating). HOWEVER- can I get some high fives and boisterous cheering for the fact that this law was passed in a NONpartisan way? I mean— let’s go!!! Who would have thought? Animal treatment for the win— makes ya think anything is possible, huh?

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    Jimmaryann.hayes

    I’m sorry, this was a boring episode because it was so completely one sided and was skimpy on the legal arguments on this legal podcast. “Everyone agrees with us” is not an argument that is Dispatch worthy.

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  7. D. Lee Grooms

    Wow. I’m not through the whole thing yet, but Josh Balk is really coming through loud (literally) as that one guy you get stuck being talked to (or at) at a party that makes you desperately search for an exit. I’m sure that quality can be and is leveraged effectively for advocacy, but it’s a lot, and the dynamic really isn’t helping his side of things for me. Gonna try to solider on through, but I may not make it through this one. To his credit, his presentation does give me that “what if I were trapped in a cage” vibe, and it’s definitely uncomfortable.

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  8. Andrew.Wimer

    Book Recommendation: If you want to know more about pork industry practices, consolidation, and government lobbying, attorney Corban Addison this year released Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial: https://www.amazon.com/Wastelands-True-Story-Country-Trial/dp/0593320824.

    The book is about the rapid growth in the pork industry in rural North Carolina and poor environmental practices that plagued homeowners. The story covers a series of federal nuisance lawsuits in district and circuit court. Fascinating read for anyone interested in the a clash between property rights and big business.

    (Also, Corban himself had an interesting case that was decided by the Virginia Supreme Court this year: https://law.justia.com/cases/virginia/supreme-court/2022/210414.html.)

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  9. General Darden

    This podcast left me wondering if Sarah was really pulling David into a personal peeve. I feel as if Sarah needs to fully disclose her animal rights beliefs, which as a long-time listener to the pod I suspect come out subtlety but deliberately (rescuing hawks, knowing the secret lives of foxes in Alexandria, etc.). David's gee-whiz sense of amazement throughout this pod comes across as disingenuous. Honestly, you don't grow up in rural Kentucky without learning that raising animals for a source of protein isn't without some sense of cruelty somewhere (nor do you have a gun without at some point restraining yourself from the edge of dropping into animal cruelty). I am not some BigAg apologist now am I a rabid anti-vivisectionist, but you owe your listeners a sense of what you believe and why you believe it. Sarah, do you eat pork, or only from humanely raised, acorn-fed porcine from the northwest of Spain? David, would you kill a wild javelina that threatened the fair maiden Sarah if she ran across it while back in the Humble/Spring neighborhood -- and you learned it was loco because it was raised in a 4 x 2 foot box in the local backyard of a carniceria?

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    1. Rich

      I have bought the Spanish chorizo from acorn fed pigs before and remember reading the packaging with some disbelief - those pigs have more living space than most people.

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  10. Nelson Patterson

    Hey @David and @Sarah, can we get your opinions on the implications of any "blowback" on the revelations out of the Durham v Danchenko trial? Is there credibility to the Durham allegation that the FBI was given cover by Mueller who failed to mention in his report that the FBI had no reason to believe the Steele Dossier after Steele was unable to corroborate or otherwise provide FBI evidence of its veracity for $1M? Did Mueller whitewash the FBI out of deliberate intent or blissful ignorance or some combination thereof? Doesn't this whole trial really make the Mueller report and the team that performed it complicit in either its ignorance of the FBI/Steele dossier or its conscious intent to provide cover for the FBI failure to dig deeper (or at least stop using the SD as basis for FISA warrants)?

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