Radiolab
Radiolab

What is a Pig Worth?

8d ago42:487,160 words
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In 2017, Wayne Hsiung and a crew of animal rights activists from Direct Action Everywhere broke into a Utah pig farm run by Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork distributors in the world. They we...

Transcript

EN

Okay, wait, you're.

Hey, this is radio lab. I'm Latif Nasser. Join the by producer, Sonduniana Sambandan.

Hey, Latif. And what do you got? Okay, so this one, it starts when this guy, Jay Menard, joined my meditation group. Okay. We're also both journalists. And so, you know, one day we started talking about the kinds of stories we are drawn to. Uh-huh. And you know, we're both Buddhist, so we're interested in like impermanence, interconnection, and suffering, you know, death. And why death and suffering, like why is that a Buddhist... Well, I mean, like the idea is that when you look at the things that scare you, there's actually a chance for kind of like a deeper truth to show itself.

Anyway, it was like this whole conversation and then at some point we realized in our own attempts to find this kind of story

We've actually both been tracking the same guy. What really? Hey, how are you all?

How are you? Hey, this guy Wayne Shunk. Okay, it's to see you. See you. So that's Jay. We actually ended up calling Wayne up together

Great. He was in California at the time. Oliver's there. What's your dog? His dog was there. Oliver

Come everybody. Oh good boy Oliver. You show happy. Yeah, it's a little mutt. He's your trainer and once Oliver settled down Wayne started telling us about oddly enough his childhood dog So I was not a very popular kid not a very well adjusted kid. I was fat. I was an immigrant Did not have any social skills. I didn't speak English that well. So Wayne grew up in this like small little town in Indiana as one of the only Chinese kids Okay, I had a lot of trouble in the friend department, but his family did have this dog and the dog was just the love of my life

Our name is Vivian and this like black labyrinth or mutt. Every time when I came home from school She literally jumps up and down out of control Vivian would cherish my every moment like she would cherish every part of me and didn't care about how fat I was You know how dorky I was she just loved me

But when I was I believe nine years old we went back to China for the first time like they were taking a family trip

Okay, my main kind of recollection from that trip was relatively early on we were in southern China and We went to this restaurant They're called I think they're called the translation is something like a wild earth restaurant like a vegan restaurant Is only that I know the opposite oh It's like you know when you go to the seafood restaurant where all the animals are like a live in these like

Variums and you could pick what you want right it's like that except Like there's every kind of animal One of the things we saw is like Like a monkey and a cage oh wow like what the chain around his neck But then like I heard barking from the back of the restaurant

You like turns around and I saw a little blocked dog You know probably like 30 or 40 pounds just huddled in a cage oh Man

Yeah, and remember he's like a nine-year-old kid. I remember just feeling like someone was killing my dog

I'd like grabbed my dad's legs and just started weeping and controllably and I Kept asking dad we have to stop them. We have to help and I still remember The words he told me which is Sun this is just what they're taught and There's nothing for us to do

And Chinese culture you do what you're taught. There's this Chinese term guai That every kid in Chinese culture wants to be guai and all the parents everybody thought I was like the most guai kid

Cause whatever the adults told me to do I'd always do it. I was very very compliant child and this is the first time I realized

Not everything that I'm taught is right and and that that sense of distrust ended up being very important to The next 30 plus years in my life So Wayne goes up goes off to college reads Peter Singer's animal liberation comes a vegan and goes on to law school It comes a blop professor. Well, but it wasn't until years later that he finally stopped following the rules and Started figuring out how to do the thing that he had wanted to do all those years ago in that restaurant in China

Let's show you a photo of what's happening inside this farm our activists were in this farm as recently as a couple days ago

He co-fans this group called direct action everywhere

Folks, we are about to march, you know massive factory farms and the heart of darkness and hell among other things they break into factory farms and

Video tape everything to show people what the farm is like inside the only way to make

This act this violent stop is for people to take direct action and you know They've done this like dozens of times like their videos have gotten thousands of views and in 2017 One of their videos gets published by the New York Times So circle four is a farm that processes and kills

1.2 million pigs every year

So Wayne standing in this kind of scrubby desert field at twilight with fourth or guys Paul's gonna be manning the camera the rest of you're gonna help me with logistics and supplies and just over the hill behind them is this enormous Pig farm owned by Smithfield Foods one of the largest port producers in the world. Our name and objective today is exposure to show the world What's actually happening behind these closed doors? So you all ready to go

You ready to go? Let's do this Then the video cuts to night

Our folks were gone to heaven this circle four. This is the heart of people. They flip their head lamps on and go in

Facilities and massive even just this one barn you can see down here I'll after I'll after I'll so they're walking around filming things and Eventually they come across a litter of piglets and this little piglet in the corner here's faces covered in blood And she's down on the ground and this time They take two of the piglets out with them

And you know after the video got published in the New York Times Smithfield issued a statement saying they commissioned this third party audit of the farm

That found no evidence of animal mistreatment and they accused Wayne of editing the video to make the farm look bad They also called the cops and Wayne got charged with multiple felonies two counts of burglary in my count of So many theft each of which could lead to years in prison. Yeah, and so Wayne eventually had to trial and it's there that He does something we really didn't expect like something sort of the opposite of what we thought someone like him would do Yeah, this weird legal maneuver that forces the jury and really all of us to

Look at this thing. We don't normally

Want to look at this messy kind of impossible question about our relationship

With animals Welcome for unregard in the matter of state versus playing The trial begins on October 3rd, 2022 in Western Utah We're in this cherrywood courtroom state is prepared to On one side, you have the prosecution a man and a woman both attorneys for the state and then on the defense

Wayne. Oh, he's representing himself. Yeah, huh, and he told us that He was feeling pretty nervous Because you're waiting for these people are gonna decide your fate to come in All right for the jury the jury files into their seats eight people men and women all locals, of course And this is like a 75% Trump county like Smithfield is one of the biggest employers in the area. Oh, now the great odds

Yeah, I mean, a lawyer you talk to had like begged him to take a plea She described the situation as hopeless and no kidding, but He wanted the fight Okay Ladies and gentlemen, the jury so the trial begins with prosecution

They argue basically This is simple Enter the model for ice-dairy Wayne broke into the farm without permission of the owner to remove the two of the pit took two piglets Scaling

You know, there's really no no question about it We have it on video that post the video online Then it's Wayne's turn against the advice of I talked to I'm gonna tell you exactly what we did And he says it's true. I did remove two piglets from Smithfield foods on the mark nine more 727. I did it

Curious strategy for a defense attorney Exactly, well, you know Wayne says for better or worse you weren't trying to hide what we had done like in fact He's like Play the video

And the prosecution is basically like

No, no, no, no, we're not we're not showing the video and Wayne's like no come on like I want you to show the jury what happened?

Why why can't he play the video?

Yeah, well, like the prosecution argues that showing it would bias the jury against the farm

And when you watch it suffering and we're gonna try and expose what's actually happening inside you can understand why

You Is this dark endless building filled with hundreds and hundreds of pigs in row on row of

Steel cages not much larger than their bodies These mother pigs are desperate to get out of the place There's smashing their heads. I began to stress the point that they have swelling on their faces cuts on their faces and the prosecution was like

That's not what this is about the judge said over and over again. Smithfield's on on trial Mr. Shen you are but like, you know like the whole reason Wayne showed up in court

And admitted what he did is that he can't actually put Smithfield on trial Because an animal doesn't have rights like a person you can't file legal complaint on their behalf right But if Wayne gets arrested doing one of these rescue trusting ourselves in the position of the animal then his thought is I can put Smithfield on trial Through you know having by putting myself on trial. Yeah. I see so even though they rule that he cannot show The video

Whenever he starts questioning a witness You see him kind of sneaking in And little details about the conditions of the farm

Basically trying to get them to just

What was in the video it's also true that among those thousands of pigs many of those piglets end up dying before they reach

But when he does that the prosecution of jacks And then You said previously that you cannot see the piglets inside because the knowing is complaining in clothes Wayne tries again The prosecution of jacks again

But Wayne does the same Another objection And animals that so if you'll do have injuries or disease, they're also to start correct Wayne just keeps doing People it's a far discarded and to downstairs presumably these piglets are not such or me You're honest trying to establish it's just saying I don't want you mentioned that again

Wayne's obviously getting nowhere He's pissing off the judge if that Wayne was a little Cocky and not just the judge he's either you know really full of himself

Hopelessly outmatched or or both you know we talked to a few of the jurors. Oh wow amazing. Yeah, yeah, and they said at this point

It didn't even seem like Wayne was acting like a real lawyer. He's an activist people close down freeways Just to get their point out there. I actually think that does a disservice. It at least to me I you know they felt that he was kind of using this trial to grandstand I wasn't particularly Happy about being tied up for a week and most of them. They just wanted to get this over with we need to be out of here by Saturday for game day And go watch football. She was playing UCLA this weekend

So that's kind of my my focus was not was just getting done through this whatever we can do to speed this along We're gonna do it. Oh, man. Yeah, so you know Wayne's strategy to make this about Smithfield like it's really not working but then the first piglet Lily was suffering a various series of an injury. He starts to focus on these two particular piglets that he took which he names Lillian Lizzie Okay, he was starving to the point that she was a fox and one forth the normal sauce

In prosecution of jacks like always

But this time the judge allows it Huh, why yeah, because Wayne is being charged with theft, right? Right and in order for him to be convicted of theft The law says the thing he took has to be worth something Huh, so at the very least he has to be able to talk about the objects. He took sure. Yeah, that makes sense So then

Wayne starts to make this case that you know these piglets. They're malnourished like they're really sick

He calls a veterinarian to the stand

Who argues I don't think she had worth that a 5% chance of surviving the piglets probably weren't gonna make it without the attention of a vet Which you know, isn't she?

And when you compare that to the monetary value of the piglet to the farm

Which another vet had testified was about $40. 42 dollars and 20 cents if you do the math These piglets would have been worth Negative $272 Well, huh, so the money to rehabilitate them was more than the money that they were worth at the time Exactly, which Wayne argued would mean he didn't technically commit theft

Huh, wow, what a weird move. It's like he clearly values the piglet because he broke into the farm to save it But then now he's in court arguing that it's actually has no value less than no value Just so he won't get in trouble Yeah, but like it's it's more complicated than that. Okay, so like at one level. Yes. He's saying that they don't have Value like a dollar value

But at the same time he's also saying that they kind of have this different kind of value like as living beings who can suffer And in particular, he's arguing in like the farm they they don't see the pig's this way This is video footage with the piglet shortly after the first time Like you can really see this happening in this one moment where Wayne is trying to introduce this clip of one of the piglets

And you know the prosecution of jacks like always

Saying like you know the blood on the piglets face that could have come from the mother and it's not really about her But to help with the piglet clearly depends on his relationship with the mom so I don't know it's right you can't actually separate these things But your judge is doing everything he can to try to do that like at one point. He watches the video like when the jury's not in the room and He's like okay, well, okay, well, look at this is this is my concern Then I'm not sure it's appropriate to show us how we shouldn't see the mom

So how about how about you just like print out a still shot and then cut out the piglet I was just sitting at the defense table with a pair of scissors cutting out eight little paper piglets

Looks like something from a second grade art class and I just thought to myself. This is just stranger than fix well

And when the jury got these little cutout pictures Hey, you you group of adults who are all over the age of 30. We're not going to let you see this because it could be too upsetting and it could be too biasing And I just you know that it pissed me off. I remember holding this paper in my hands looking at it is is

Wings describing it. I thought why did you have to cut the paper? They told us at this point they started to think like

What is it you don't want us to see yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's when I started to question wait a minute If this is so clear cut you should be able to lay out all the facts and let us Make an educated decision But before they could make any decision we got the closing arguments

I think it's clear that the pig's first job. You know the prosecution says a magic use of the word

Rescue and some other context the piglets did have value to the farms like even if they were sick You can't just take them you were out in the grocery and you saw With dance they compare the piglets to a dented can Dented oh the vote of the runt piglets are dented can't exactly and like you can't just take a dented can from a store Right, okay, but in Wings closing argument after all this talk about

Economic value and these piglets being technically worth less than nothing Wayne comes just leaves that behind entirely and says, you know You just equipped me because I did the right thing These piglets deserve to be saved If you defend our right to give aid

The diamonds to then the right all citizens take dime and sick Inorganis how the names will be a long compassionate to the creatures find it a their story show

So if we're thinking about this almost like 12 angry men in the room where were people's positions the room?

Was split about 50 50 there was one that was not guilty to that we're pretty sure

There were guilty and then there was this mix in the middle of unsure and whe...

I wasn't sure what I was gonna do and who's side I was on okay and since this is a criminal case They need a unanimous vote right okay. Let's do this

Okay, so they first decide they're gonna tackle the burglary charge and the technical definition of burglary

They're told is you're in a place that you're not supposed to be with the intent To take something of value and you know, they'd actually seen that part of the video where Wayne is like outside the farm Giving his team instructions and he says if if we find an animal in need We'll do what we have to do if if and this if they argue like it frees him from intent We unanimously agreed you you you can charge them with the burglary so burglary done next they have theft

You did take the thing he took the thing yeah, but remember like theft requires proving that the thing that was taken has quote Value was it monetary value or just value?

Just value so yeah, they they just said it has to have value and you have to keep in mind here

There's two types of value in the room. Okay. There's the economic value right which if you took this argument that it was Zero or even negative would get him off the hook correct But also this other kind of value like the inherent value of a living thing a being and

Wayne obviously believes in this so what motivated him to take the piglets in the first place

And if the piglets have that kind of value then the loss is he should be guilty Yeah, what yeah, it's up. It's a paradox like the logic. Let's lip. Yeah, right bizarre. It's it's a conundrum The question becomes like what kind of value are we talking about here right and so they're like okay Well, maybe we just asked the judge you know we went and we talked to the bailiff and we said hey We've got a question can we can we go give this to the judge for them to talk about and so our question was

Who determines the value of the pig to whom is it to Smith filled is it to Wayne is it us is it The free trade market is at the New York Stock Exchange you value to whom and we actually asked if we can all go

Outside into that locked parking lot that we had all been driving into a week and just get some fresh air

While they while they deliberated they're asked to come back and they're handed a paper That has the response and from the judge from the judge and what that paper says is it's for you to decide oh

Missing that game yeah, yeah, and like this to me is like sort of crazy it's like how is there no answer to this question?

We will watch the jury try to find one and try to find some answers ourselves right after we take a very quick break We'll be right back Hi Lulu here and this episode is sponsored by better help may is mental health awareness month and as someone who reports on mental health Who likes talking to people about their mental health and what they look to in science in the natural world in faith in friendship

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Sign up and get 10% off at better help.com/radialab that's better h-e-l-p dot com slash radio lab Each story you hear on planet money starts with a question What happens if we refund tariffs why or grocery so expensive and if you are we stand for your right to be curious because the forces shaping our world can be hard to see

Follow NPR's planet money wherever you get your podcasts and start seeing how the economy really works Welcome back this is radio lab animal rights activist Wayne shung is still on trial for theft and The jury has asked the judge to clarify what it means for piglets to have quote-unquote

Value so they can help make their decision and in response the judge has basi...

shrugged yeah, we actually ran the situation by Justin Marso and I'm a lot professor at the University of Denver

Kristen still at Harvard Law School animal law professors. It's kind of crazy to me that there isn't a clear definition

Value seems like such a vague term Well, yeah, I mean yes, I know right I mean it rarely comes up

Justin, he told us like basically with any other object the value is set the value is fixed

We know how much your car is worth we could figure out how much your printer is worth you figure out how much your computer is worth But when you ask that same question about animals are intuition tells us that an animal is nothing like a couch It's not like a car. It's you know not even really like a family heirloom. It gets weird like that's a strange scenario Because this value question like it quickly gets us to this much bigger question What is an animal in the wall like what even are they that's a big question that is dog big question

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. It's a great question and how you answer this question is about value sure

But also about whether they deserve protection or like have rights, okay? So

Legal scholars have actually come up with three big buckets

This three part framework reways of thinking about these questions. Uh-huh. And the first is they are property

They are just ours to use like just think about how we farm animals that we eat that this is just like just stuff Yeah, yeah, they just exist to do what you want to them Category two is of you in which we may still see animals as property But we value them and so far as we benefit Basically animals are property that means something to us think of a

pet or a workhorse and therefore we protect them laws passed in that vein would be done to help animals But the ultimate beneficiaries humans, okay, and then the third approach is that animals Well, they have some approximate equality the humans approximate and this one they told us is harder to find An example could maybe be animal testing bands on chimpanzees. We're providing protection for them because we think it's the right thing to do for them Yeah, so anyway, it's it's a helpful framework

But the problem is like any certain type of animal can actually like fit into more than one bucket

The rabbit like consider a rabbit I feel deeply connected to rabbits a rabbit can be a pet, okay, and in that category

They kind of have like the highest level of protection like you have to feed them you have to like keep them warm

But also A rabbit can be a prey animal, you know something you hunt for sport rabbit can be an animal Medical research with rabbits is behind the development of most prescription drugs Who's tested upon in the lab these lab rabbits they actually have more protections than the ones that are raised Almost like an a factory farm for fur

ingredients you obviously need some rabbit or for food. I'm going to cut the rabbit and you just twist it off A rabbit cuts across all these categories and it's just context here context is the thing that slots the Rabbit into one or another of these categories right right like we kill rabbits all the time for food or fur But let's say somebody kills your pet rabbit that could be a felony wow this was a patch with the name that changed Sort of the protections that it had yeah, she had

It pronouns becomes this whole thing Yes, right right right this is funny because it's like the other pronoun battle that you're not paying the Yeah, yeah, which seems silly, but like it gets this question of like what category are they you know Are they something or someone right right and it's not just rabbits like take dogs okay like if your dog gets run over You get whatever you bought the dog for like you know like the $50 option fee oh wow that's cold on the other hand when you die

You can leave your dog or cat all of your money Yeah, it's it's it's pretty wild and you can really see the court struggling with this contradiction like there was this one case We're dog was run over in front of his owner the court says look Stahl was a family member and the family got to sue for emotional distress Wow, and then there was another case in Texas where they ruled yeah the dog is property and then they literally say not like a toast

Okay, and this confusion about what animals are like what they deserve from us in the law like All of that like that is what the jury was thrown into when the judge left it up to them to decide What the value of the piglets were the value of the pig meant something different to different people the conversation was all over the place

They were bouncing around these categories too like on the one hand

There were some pretty impassioned arguments about you know the inherent value of life

There was this religious view in the room. Let's just say they have a soul also like always had dogs cats fish

Hamsters kind of you name it growing up they were my best friends. I just love them love animals You know as a group of people that cared about animals But also some of them had strong feelings about property somebody brought up like an example of if I have a rust bucket of a lawn mower sitting in my backyard Can somebody just come in and take it go? They're not using it. You know what if I had a paper clip in my hand

Would it have value to me and someone else would throw it away?

Which sparked a lot of conversation about the value that takes to Smithfield is there any value to a dead pig You know, are they put into fertilizer? Are they put into feed? Wow, they are really going all over the place here Yeah, everything someone was saying about value made sense But you put all those legitimate thoughts together They conflicted you know and we we had then deliberating for seven hours at this point. I'd heard just about every argument

I'd been running through my head. I had jumped that fence a couple times myself It was very very emotional there was tears there was some table thumping so we took a break and and we all went out and walked around Just had a minute to get out of the situation and allow the mind to just kind of calm a little bit and it went up to the one gentleman I says I'm not sure we're gonna get this resolved and he says well, I want you to go talk to the one gal that greets with you and see if you guys it would even bud

So I went over and talked to this guy said it I really think we owe it to To everybody to us his jurors to the defendants to the pro take come up with a unanimous decision

The court clerk called me on the phone. Yeah, well said, you know, there's a verdict you should come in

Judge calls the jury in You want the jury walked in to kind of the jury Seating area and they walked in, you know two single-fied lines got him in these two rows A jurors that I was like on the side of the table, so I could look straight at them They didn't really give me eye contact and they look kind of avoidin. No, boy

The four person raise their hand The judge asks them if they had come to an investigation. Yes, the man says yes, man the reach of verdict. Let's get ready Wayne stands up And the clerk starts to read Five zero zero through a six point

With the jurors and you both the vote case find it a billion Wayne is here as well. We're gonna read first burglary

Not guilty. Yeah, and then that Wait, what not guilty? Both not guilty I did it kind of a double take. I was like, oh, we want wow Huh and what wow. I'm now so curious what these jurors

Said happen behind the scenes. Well, actually one of the jurors we spoke to she kind of had this like this thought this like metaphor That really like helped her kind of come to her decision and and apparently helped a lot of the jurors in the room I just Visually saw this pig Just sitting in a box and I thought okay, who's holding this box and what value does this pig have

And I started voicing this analogy Out loud and I said so and I mentioned this jurors name and I said if you're holding this pig this pig has huge amounts of value to you I said if I'm holding this pig has value to me. It's a living breathing animal. It has a conscience. It's It's alive and I said

What if we put it in the hands of Smithville farms does this pig have value?

But wouldn't that logic just like either You can say it had value to him so it is a crime or it didn't have value to Smithfield who he took it from So no no value there not a crime

Like basically this logic just lets the jury vote for whoever they want to vote for right

I mean some of the jurors we spoke to didn't see it that way. I did it by the books I did what was legally presented to me on a document. It was agreed upon by all parties

They felt like they were following the letter of the law, but at the same tim...

We talked to not having an answer to the question of value

Gave me the instructions of it's okay to make that moral decision She said she did feel like there was space for her to do what she felt was right And you know this is part of what Wayne was trying to do like to make it a moral decision Like even just giving them names Lily and Lizzie which by the way even the prosecution at one point Started using once you start seeing people referring to them by the name then kind of conceptually

You're recognizing that there's something more than you know Smithfield 245 like one of the jurors told us I don't remember a lot of things from that trial, but I remember those two piglet's names And according to Justin who actually interviewed all the jurors himself for his own research

I mean, I think there were some moral polls there, but they were still looking for a legalistic

You know kind of hook to land on both these ways of thinking were in the room like they both played a part

Okay, so Okay, now just zooming out What did this case change after everything well in in a legal sense? Not much really wow that's not the answer Yeah, I mean so the best they could have hoped for was that actually there would be a guilty verdict

And they could bring it to in a peels court and within a peels court, you know it could change case law But this funny he was too successful too early Yeah, and what actually ended up happening is that state legislators after this case passed this law that said

You know you can't use the animals being sick and therefore worthless as a defense

So that actually backfired god legally in Utah does sort of seem that way yeah, and like the other thing that seems to have come out of this is that Companies and like prosecutors or they're like, okay, well, that was a disaster They don't want to go through that again. Let's stop charging these activists with theft and You know, maybe just charge them with trespass so they we don't get into school value debate break because otherwise We're drawing attention to the thing that we don't want to draw attention to like it's like they're just avoiding

They're ducking the fight totally like there is this whole other case in Wisconsin where two weeks before the trial was supposed to start They dropped the charges huh and he and his team actually wrote it and they're like no, we still want this Everything about this guy's story and these legal cases feels upside down, you know, but if you think about it It makes sense when actually needs the court. He needs this platform to force people to

Release sit in the confusion and grapple. Yes questions, right?

You know, I one of the things Justin told us is often people can just turn away If you're uncomfortable something you just look away or you have an explanation But these cases don't allow that right you're on the jury forced to took it front it And that's exactly what happened to the jurors in this case And going through that it bonded them we all had each other's phone numbers and we thought man

It would be nice just to get together and talk outside of here. So I invited everybody over to the house You know, they would get together over dinners One of the jurors brought over his pizza oven. We've actually got to be pretty good friends I'm curious have you guys talked at all about like Like eating pork or like the the sort of like the pigs like that that element of it has that come up

And initially like when we very first kind of got together we talked about it and I think most people still do eat meat

You know, I used to have a habit of I jog on Saturdays and kind of my thing was I'd come home and cook up some bacon My my daughter said what you can't do that anymore you get eat bacon and where's like all right? That's true And so it didn't kind of change but you do it's it's hard after years and years of being in a certain way to Completely change the fact of the matter is no matter what all these activists do and everything Protein meat from animals is going to be used by a good portion of the public

But can it be done in a way that you may and they were on a farm? They're not in these Processed facilities where they're in a cage that work and we find that we actually found a place North of us here up in parallel I'm not gonna lie if I if I if I see like a nice dollar slice of pepperoni or something it's still it's still is appealing to me But it's just not something that I've

gone back to Maybe despite the fact that like there's not really legal precedence in this case and there's law from Utah

Justin he told us like this case points at this shift in the way

We see and therefore like the law will see Animals increasingly

Science and sort of our own human understanding of animals is making it clear that animals you know are not property and you know

That's that's part of the reason that I enjoy talking to these jurors and it's been so many hours doing so from different cases Is

People who have never thought about animals in the law and their status

When they are confronted with these issues they do overwhelmingly say uh That's interesting and whether they quit or convict It wasn't easy for them and it wasn't obvious and that's sort of how I see animal law going It's going to be this incremental Process that's gonna be hard sometimes just like with the jurors it's gonna be tearful

But fundamentally

All of the field of animal law is about

Asking people to answer this question for themselves You This episode was reported by senduniana summon them and jaman art and produced by senduniana Summa then with help from Pat Walters who's edited by Alex Neeson and Pat Walters and fact check by Diane a Kelly Special thanks to Kim Naderfane Petersa

Neeson peer boom joe i'd been Sam Kozlov Rachel Gross and Alex Io

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait what happened to the piglets? Lily and Lizzy?

Yeah, so after Wayne took them from the farm he brought them to this like sanctuary where they would Nurse back to health and kind of bizarrely someone's after the trial the jurors they actually Want to go visit them like Justin invited you last thing last time we had seen them I mean you know teeny tiny little piglets like a mango a little teeny thing We're just amazed to see these massive animals wow anyway the thing that really stood out that they said was this

One little detail about how they looked they're skin is so white they're white It's just a feature of this breed that's really common in big farms

But what that meant for them is that they basically couldn't go in the sun without getting sunburnt

Yeah, and I just have this image stuck in my head of Lily and Lizzy these like

Two giant pigs with like paper white skin laying in the shade of a tree on this farm So they don't get sunburnt Hi, I'm Gabby. I'm from the Bay Area California and here are the staff credits Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Lottiff Nasser soren Wheeler is our executive editor Sarah Sandback is our executive director our managing editors Pat Walters

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