Lehe: Put the pig barnhouse out to pasture

I don’t eat pigs, because they’re too smart. That is my whole reason. A pig is smarter than… I don’t eat pigs, because they’re too smart. That is my whole reason. A pig is smarter than a dog or a young child. Look that up on the Internet.

The clincher isn’t killing an intelligent animal, though. An immutable part of nature is that animals eat other animals. The lesson is basic enough to merit a musical number in “The Lion King,” even if it disturbs kids. How could I claim it’s OK for a lion to eat a pig, but not for me? The convincing reason to not kill an animal is that the species it perpetuates is endangered, which isn’t the case for pigs. And were pigs endangered, I would want to keep other animals from eating pigs, too … if only out of jealousy.

So, it’s not the slaughterhouse that nauseates me; it’s the barnhouse — if the noun “barnhouse” is really vague enough to signify both the folksy structure that Amish families raise and the gymnasium of torture where pigs are kept. What spoils pigflesh for me is how pigs are treated while they’re alive.

Farmers incarcerate pigs in group cells so tight the pigs cannot turn around. They stand smeared with their own shit, urine and vomit all day. They rarely glimpse sunshine. The air they breath is polluted enough for workers to need masks. Worst of all, although pigs are complex, social creatures, they cannot enjoy relationships or utilize their intelligence. The lack of stimulation induces masochistic behavior such as biting metal bars.

The pigs’ world is damp, dim, rotting, boring and fixed against a backdrop of ceaseless shrieking. If pigs made music, they’d record box sets of the darkest black-metal albums ever conceived. Because pigs are intelligent and social land mammals, we shouldn’t pretend that the pigs’ experience in the factory farm differs much from what we ourselves — or at least a young child — would feel in the same conditions. So, take a moment and imagine. The eventual slaughter is actually an act of mercy. It’s the kindness of putting down a dog with cancer, but a cancer that has never ceased to pain the dog since birth.

Maybe you don’t care about the pig experience like I do. But you should recognize you are inconsistent, and I would hope the cognitive dissonance would be enough to make bacon more of a headache than it’s worth.

The ethics and legislation of animal cruelty suffer from a gaping pig-shaped blindspot. A common bumper sticker reminds us, “Abuse an animal, go to jail!” But apparently the maxim doesn’t apply when the animal in question is delicious — though not so nutritious. If police bust into a cavernous warehouse of caged dogs, knee-deep in shit, bloated and deformed, chewing on metal bars in a frenzy of nervous depression, then the people responsible would spend years in prisons that boast only slightly better conditions.

Why do we legislate better treatment for dogs than for other animals? Presumably, because dogs are intelligent and have human-like emotions … like pigs, except dogs are dumber than pigs. Sadly, the difference seems to be that dogs sting at our sappy side, but this is only because dogs have evolved and been bred to worship us and replicate our facial expressions.

Some people say I’m inconsistent, because I will eat other animals besides pigs. The truth is that it makes me uncomfortable how chickens and cows are treated. But I’m not inconsistent. I’ve just drawn a line that goes, “Dogs and above” on the “intelligence-and-human-emotions” scale and won’t eat anything above it, be they dolphins, orangutans or pigs. The line might strike you as arbitrary, but even a vegetarian or vegan position is arbitrary in that it depends on the “animal/plant” divider — as if something eternal took place when zoologists drew up their charts.

I think the best way to think about these distinctions is that they are good things you want to buy when you have the choice. It is a matter of light ethics that borders on personal taste. Almost everyone wants to treat some types of non-human life differently, even if there’s no holy book or rigorous philosophy handing down mandates about which life forms to leave out traps for and which to leave alone. We don’t have to be ashamed — or feel like bleeding-heart liberal softies — for respecting these distinctions any more than we are ashamed of not buying certain toothpaste flavors.

Individuals in other countries can’t make these choices because they are poorer. But ours is an affluent society. We have a nimble free market that pivots on our choices. Because of the variety this market offers, I have gone years without eating pork. More importantly, I have gone years realizing an ethically consistent, benevolent, civilized lifestyle choice. I’m proud.

In the end, I haven’t even really made a sacrifice. Pork is bad for you. Turkey bacon tastes fine. Beef franks taste much better than pork hot dogs. A chicken biscuit doesn’t give you bad breath like a sausage biscuit does. So, why not give up pig today?

E-mail Lewis at lewis500@gmail.com.