Language & Ecology Online Journal (2004) available from http:// www.ecoling.net/journal.html

Pigs, discourse and ecological destruction

by Arran Stibbe

The Vanuatu islanders in Melanesia have a particularly close relationship with pigs. Pigs are carefully nurtured, regarded as family members, and pig-caring can, on occasion, even take precedence over child-bearing (Miles 1997). And this close relationship lasts until the pig is caressed and sung to before being ritually clubbed to death. Although the ending may not be a happy one for the pigs, the relationship is symbiotic to a certain extent, and has some ecologically beneficial consequences.

The same cannot be said for the relationship between the inhabitants of the USA and the numerous pigs who share the country with them. Millions of these pigs are confined indoors on intensive farms, fed antibiotics, choke on ammonia from pools of waste, have their environment controlled by machines, and are driven across the country in trucks to a few central processing plants where they are messily slaughtered (Eisnitz 1997). The ecological damage done by such intensive farming is enormous (see Hawken et al 2000). The question is, why are things done this way? In a country with widespread obesity and heart disease, the answer clearly does not lie in the social benefits of cheap pork.

One of reasons for the troubled relationship between pigs and humans may be the long distance nature of the relationship. Pork industry executives in air-conditioned offices are isolated from the ecological damage and suffering that intensive farming entails. The financial equations the executives manipulate, the plans for farms they create, and the guides for farm management they write, constitute a particular discourse which mediates the pig-human relationship. Through its influence on human action this discourse has repercussions in the physical world, both on the lives of the pigs concerned, and on the eco-systems in which humans, pigs and all life co-exist.

The entire structure of the pork industry is based on the model of industrial mass production. However, there is a fundamental difference between a factory and a farm in that farms care for living beings while factories deal with inanimate objects. The discourse of the pork industry overcomes this important contradiction through metaphors which transform living pigs into inanimate objects.

The Pork Industry Handbook (PIH) is the main source of information for pig farmers, and within its pages, pigs are frequently depicted as objects through a variety of linguistic devices. These include pigs-are-machines metaphors such as 'To prevent sow breakdown make sure the lactation ration is properly fortified…' (PIH 2002: 8) and 'boars remain structurally sound' (PIH 2002: 1). A metaphor with similar effect is pigs-are-resources, whereby pigs are 'produced' (PIH 2002:85), 'stocked' (PIH 2002, 55), 'used' (PIH 2002:83), and have 'salvage value' (PIH 2002:8).

The PIH sometimes manages to confuse living pigs with meat, for instance 'Some hogs have weak hindquarters, and they are more likely to fall down and split. The damaged meat has to be trimmed' (PIH 2002:116). Definitions such as 'A sow unit denotes a mature female in production...' (PIH 2002:15) further contribute to the objectification of pigs.

When pigs are treated as inanimate objects within a factory model, health and welfare concerns become obscured by financial considerations. As the Pork Industry Handbook points out, 'The success of a swine enterprise is measured in terms of profit' (PIH 2002:100). The PIH is full of equations where variables such as cage size and the average number of pigs dying in confinement are manipulated in order to maximise profit. Pigs become mere variables in equations which revolve around profit and do not include ecological or welfare concerns.

Health is an important consideration for pig farms, but the discourse of the PIH redefines the notion of pigs' health solely in terms of financial variables:

"Health is the condition of an animal with regard to the performance of its vital functions. The vital functions of the pig are reproduction and growth. They are vital because they are major contributors to the economic sustainability of the pork production enterprise." (PIH 2002:140).

Other health concerns, such as the damage to pigs' lungs caused by the ammonia they breath, injuries to their legs from slatted floors, and the effects of not being able to move, can be ignored when health is defined only in terms of reproduction and growth. Disease is similarly defined in terms of damage to corporate interests rather than to the pigs themselves 'Disease is a major risk to farm sustainability, thus protection of herd health is a top priority' (PIH 2002:140).

Through the expression 'herd health', attention is diverted from the health needs of individual pigs. Individuality is completely obscured through reference to a flow of pigs: 'test-mating…can save dollars by avoiding lost time and interrupted pig flow.' (PIH 2002:1). Likewise, by referring to pigs in terms of volume rather than number of individuals, the PIH denies individuality: 'the volume of sows slaughtered in different time periods' (PIH 2002:132).

There are many other aspects of the discourse of the pork industry which influence the treatment of pigs and the ecological impact of farming (see Stibbe forthcoming), but the examples above illustrate an important pattern. Analysis of the discourse of the pork industry suggests that it uses metaphors, pronouns, definitions, presuppositions and other linguistic techniques to represent pigs as objects, machines, inanimate resources, variables, and as a mass rather than as individuals. As Adams (1993:2001) points out: 'someone who has a very particular, situated life, a unique being, is converted into something that has no distinctiveness, no uniqueness, no individuality.'

Reconstructing pigs as objects paves the way for people to treat them in ways which go against their nature, for example, confining huge numbers of pigs indoors in the same room, or stacking pigs into trucks and driving them to distant slaughterhouses. As the PIH itself admits 'In confinement, the high animal density allows for rapid transmission of respiratory and enteric pathogens from pig to pig' (PIH 2002: 145). The treatment of animals against their nature causes them immense suffering, and can incubate diseases which can spread into the human population. Bird-flu is the most recent example, and intensive pig farms provide the ideal location for diseases like this to mingle with human flu (which pigs are also susceptible to) and to mutate. Ultimately, treating animals in ways that go against their nature contributes to ecological destruction. The discourse of the pork industry, to the extent that it influences the actions of farmers, plays an important role in this destruction.

Notes

For a more detailed analysis of the discourse of the pork industry see Stibbe, Arran "As charming as a pig: The discursive construction of the relationship between pigs and humans", to appear shortly in Society & Animals

References

Adams, C. (1993). The feminist traffic in animals, in G Gaard (ed) Ecofeminism: women, animals, nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press 195-218

Eisnitz, Gail (1997) Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry. New York: Prometheus

Hawken, Paul and Amory Lovins, and Hunter Lovins Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. Back Bay Books

Miles, W. (1997). Pigs, Politics and Social Change in Vanuatu, Society & Animals, 5 (2)

PIH (2002) The Pork Industry Handbook on CD ROM 2002. The numbers refer to the numbers of information sheets rather than page numbers. All emphasis has been added.

Proper. 1995. Proper Treatment of Hogs Prior to Stunning. Meat Marketing & Technology [on-line], May. http://mtgplace.com/articles/m3.asp

Stibbe (2001) Language, power and the social construction of animals. Society and Animals. 9:2

Stibbe (forthcoming) As charming as a pig: The discursive construction of the relationship between pigs and humans. Society & Animals

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