To return to a Michael Pollen note for a bit (sorry), I came across a section of Omnivore’s Dilemma today that devoted some discussion to “opting out.” The context was home-schooling parents who also decide to buy their food from local farmers rather than from the grocery store, and Pollan described them as having “opted.
Pigs raised in factory farms have their tails docked (i.e., cut off) because they are weaned from their mothers at about 12 days. They would normally wean at about three weeks, but the feed they are given causes them to grow at a much faster rate than their mother’s milk would. However, pigs who are.
This was a remark made in the breeder comment thread. An odd one, I thought. It sounds sensical at first– surviving is something we all need to do individually, and reproducing is something we at least need to do as a species, so how can someone apply “right and wrong” to them? But I think.