What is a Pig Worth?

Wait, you're listening. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Door listening to radio lab. Radio from W and Y. See. See. Hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm Latif Nasr joined by producer Sin Duniana 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, inter-connection, 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. Huh. 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? Hi, Wayne. This guy Wayne Schum. Okay. Nice to see you. So that's Jay. We actually ended up calling Wayne up together. Great. He was in California at the time. Oliver. Oliver's there. What's your dog? His dog was there. Oliver. Give me a buddy. Good boy, Oliver. You're so happy. You know, I'm this little mutt. He's from China. 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. I 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 who had a lot of trouble in the friend department. But his family did have this dog. And this dog was just the love of my life. Her name was Vivian. It's like black, labored or mud. 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 relative to the early on. We were in southern China. And we went to this restaurant. They're called, I think they're called the translation of something like a wild earth restaurant. Like a vegan restaurant or something like that? I know the opposite. Oh. It's like, you know, when you go to the seafood restaurant where all the animals are like alive in these like aquariums 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 was like, like a monkey and a cage. Oh wow. Like with the chain around his neck. And then like I heard barking from the back of the restaurant. He like turns around and I saw a little block dog, you know, probably like 30 or 40 pounds, just huddled and 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 like grabbed my dad's legs and just started weeping uncontrollably and I kept asking him, dad, we have to stop them. We have to stop them. We have to help. And I still remember the words he told me, which were, son, 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 because 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 that sense of distrust ended up being very important to the next 30 plus years of my life. So Wayne grows up, goes off to college, reads Peter Singer's animal liberation. He comes to vegan, goes on to law school, becomes a blogger, professor. Wow. 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 his group called direct action everywhere. Folks, we're about to march into a massive factory farm with a heart of darkness and hell. Among other things, they break into factory farms and videotape everything to show people what the farm is like inside. The only way to make this violent stop is for people to take direct action. And they've done this dozens of times. Their videos have gotten thousands of views. And in 2017, one of their videos gets published by The New York Times. So Circle 4 is a farm that processes and kills 1.2 million pigs every year. So Wayne's standing in this kind of scrubby desert field at twilight with four other guys. Paul is going to manage the camera. The rest of you are going to 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 pork producers in the world. Our naming objective today is exposure to show the world what's actually happening behind these closed doors. So you're all ready to go? You ready to go? Let's do this. Then the video cuts tonight. Our folks were gone to heaven to circle for this is the heart of evil. They flip their headlamps on and go in. The facility is massive. Even just this one barn you can see down here. Isle after isle after isle. So they're walking around filming things and eventually they come across a litter of piglets. And they look 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 and my count of felony theft. Each of which could lead to years in prison. Yeah. And so Wayne eventually heads 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, we're on record in the matter of state versus playing the show. The trial begins on October 3rd, 2022 in western Utah. We're in this cherry wood courtroom. 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 going to decide your fate to come in. 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, not great odds. Yeah, I mean, a lawyer he talked to had like begged him to take a plea. She described the situation as hopeless. 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. Wayne broke into the farm, took two piglets, you know, there's really no question about it. We have it on video. And then it's Wayne's turn against the advice of pretty much all day Chinese. I've talked to you. I'm going to tell you exactly what we did on the night of the question. And he says it's true. I did remove two piglets from Smithfield Foods on the more night of March 7, 2017. 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, we have no orders from the court. We're not talking about animals. 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 can't he play the video? - Yeah, well, like the prosecution argues that showing it would bias the jury against the farm. - You can already hear the screams of the murder because inside-- - And when you watch it-- - You're suffering and we're gonna try and expose what's actually happening inside. - You can understand why. (audience cheering) - Oh, yeah, yeah! - 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 other pigs are desperate to get out of the place. They're smashing their heads up against these threats to 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. Shung, 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 rescues-- - Trusting ourselves in the position of the animal. - Then his thought is I can put Smithfield on trial through, you know, having a record-- - By putting myself on trial. - Yeah, I see. - So even though they rule that he cannot show the video-- - Mr. Topman, my name is Wayne Shung. I'm an defendant in Council in this case. I'm gonna ask you a few questions to follow up on what Mr. Christian's in-hasties, all right? - No problem. - Whenever he starts questioning a witness-- - Mr. Topman, we testify that you viewed a video of the truth in the forest. - You see him kind of sneaking in-- - But you had no knowledge of the truth in part of that video? - Little details about the conditions of the farm. - That's probably because there are lots of piglets in Smithfield. - Basically trying to get them to just-- - In fact, there are thousands of pigs, even at a single farm like yours, correct? - Describe 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 Florida, correct? - Objected this truth. - But when he does that-- - He's the drug to the case. - The prosecution of Jax. - So staying in your objective-- - And then-- - You said previously that you cannot see the piglets inside because the building is completely closed. - Wayne tries again. - And they did it wrong. I think the line of question going down is leading us toward our management practice. - The prosecution of Jax again. - So then I'll ask you just about a gestation of one. - But Wayne does the same thing again. - There are thousands of dead piglets at Smithfield Foods in any unit of the property. - Another objection. - So staying. - Edden. - And animals that do have interest or disease, they are also discarded, correct? - Wayne just keeps doing this. - And piglets at bar discarding into dumpsters. - Presumably these piglets are not so familiar with the carotene. - This is the time I said the objective's not the question. - You know what I'm just trying to establish? - It's sustained. - I don't know what you're mentioning that again. - Wayne's obviously getting nowhere. I just sustained the suggestion. - He's pissing off the judge. - I thought Wayne was a little cocky. - And not just the judge. He's either really full of himself, hopelessly outmatched or both. We talked 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 it to service it, at least to me. - 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. Shoot, Tuzz playing UCLA this weekend. So that's kind of my focus 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 from various serious foot injuries. - He starts to focus on these two particular piglets that he took, which he names, Lily and Lizzie. - Okay. - And the point that she was approximately one fourth the normal socks. - I'm juxtaposing you, Runner. He's still talking about the conditions. - In prosecution of Jax, like always. - This is about being in the picture as you were announcing the other individual. - But this time, the judge allows it. - This is a piglet who had wounds all. - 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. So at the very least, he has to be able to talk about the objects he took. - Sure, yeah, that makes sense. - So then. - Tell us about these two individual things. - Wayne starts to make this case that, you know, these piglets, they're malnourished. Like they're really sick. - It shows the diarrhea, it's like explosions. - He calls a veterinarian to this stand. - She doesn't stand, rose and burnt. - Who argues. - I don't think she had more than a five percent chance of surviving. - The piglets probably weren't gonna make it without the attention of a vet, which, you know, isn't cheap. - It's a minimum of $315 to get a perv, they care about she can do it. - And when you compare that to the monetary value of the piglet to the farm, - What would be the value of the 10 to 12 pound piglet? - Which another vet had testified was about $40. - $42 and 20 cents. - If you do the math, these piglets would have been worth negative $272. - Whoa, 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 actually has no value, less than no value, just so he won't get in trouble. - Yeah, but like, 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. - How many moves have now it is at three? - And in particular, he's arguing in like the farm, they don't see the pigs this way. - This is video footage of Lizzy the Piglet, shortly after the first start. - 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 what is the video show? It shows Lizzy the blood cover face. - And you know, the prosecution of Jax, like always. - You know what I mean? The stick of Jax, we think like, you know, the blood on the piglet's face, that could have come from the mother, and it's not really about her. - But the health of the piglet clearly depends on its relationship with the mom, so I don't know. - Right, you can't actually separate these things, but like the 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, this is my concern. The, I'm not sure it's appropriate to show this out. - We shouldn't see the mom. So how about you just like print out a still shot and then cut out the piglet? - That's what I would allow to do with the jury. - This is so weird. - I was just sitting at the defense table with the parasizzers cutting out eight little paper piglets. It looked like something from a second grade art class, and I just thought to myself, this is just stranger than fiction. - Whoa. - And when the jury got these little cut out 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, it pissed me off. - I remember holding this paper in my hands, looking at it, is Elaine's 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 here? - 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 pigs were still-- - You know, the prosecution says-- - Imagine the use of the word "rescue" in some other context. - The piglets did have value to the farms. Like even if they were sick, you can't just take them. - No, it's because you were in the groceries. And you saw a can with denser. - They compared the piglets to a dented can. - Dented, oh, the runt piglets are dented can. - Exactly. And like, you can't just take a dented can from a store. - Now, I got a rescue that can put in my purse, pick it up. - Right. - Okay. - Wayne's closing argument, after all this talk about economic value and these piglets being technically worth less than nothing, Wayne kind of just leaves that behind entirely and says, you know, you should just equip me because I did the right thing. These piglets deserve to be saved. - If you defend our rights to give aid to dying in us, defend the right all citizens to die in sick and in unanimous, companies will be a little more compassionate to be creatures that are theirs through it. Governments will be a little more open to animal cruelty confronts and maybe just maybe a baby piglet lily won't have to starve enough on for the fact or for. - The trial comes to a close and after that, it's in the hands of the jury. - So if we're thinking about this almost like 12 angry men, the room where were people's positions. The room was split about 50 50. Huh. There was one that was not guilty to that were pretty sure there were guilty and then there was this mix in the middle of unsure. And where were you in that? I was the unsure. I wasn't sure what I was going to do and whose 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 the first decide they're going to 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 us human instructions. And he says if if we find an animal in need will do what we have to do if if and this if they argue like it frees him from intent. Huh. We unanimously agreed you you couldn't charge them with the burglary. So burglary done. Next they have theft. You did take the thing. You 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 them 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. It's what motivated him to take the piglets in the first place. And if the piglets have that kind of value, then the law says he should be guilty. Yeah. What? Yeah. It's a paradox. Like the logic flips. Yeah. Right. Bizarre. 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 ask the judge. You know, we went and we talked to the bay lift 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 too Smithfield? Is it too Wayne? Is it us? Is it the free trade market? Is it the New York stock exchange you value to whom? And we actually asked if we could 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 there asked to come back and they're handed a paper that has a response and from the judge from the judge and what that paper says is it's for you to decide. Oh, they're 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 BetterHelp. 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 wherever it may be to help guide them through the rough patches of life. I just wanted to take a moment to say what seems to help people turn corners find relief get out of ruts and even flourish is having someone with you as much as we can feel private about our mental health struggles you do not have to go it alone. So this may why not treat your mental health to a buddy and who better to talk to and a fully licensed mental health therapist with over 30,000 therapists available better help us someone you can talk to available at pretty much anytime that's convenient for you at the push of a button and because finding the help you need often depends on the therapist client vibe rest assured with better help you can switch providers at any time. Remember truly your mental health matters and you don't have to go it alone find the support you need anytime with better help sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/radialab that's better H-E-L-P dot com slash radio lab. In the suburbs of DC a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. Now we're one of which emergency we just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible a new series from ABC audio in 2020 blood and water listen now wherever you get your podcasts. 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 basically shrugged. Yeah we actually ran the situation by Justin Marso and I'm a law 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 and no 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 we figure out how much your computer is worth but when you ask that same question about animals our intuition tells us that an animal is nothing like a couch it's nothing 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 law? Like what even are they? That's a big question that is that 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. Three ways 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. This is just like just stuff yeah yeah they just exist to do what you want to them. Category two is a view in which we may still see animals as property but we value them and so far as we benefit. Basically animals are property that mean something to us. Okay 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 beneficiary is humans okay and then the third approach is that animals well they have some approximate equality to 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 a helpful framework but the problem is like any certain type of animal can actually like fit into more than one bucket. This is a rabbit. 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 protections 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. A rabbit can be an animal. A new 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. Fittings and liners hats. You're just going to need a few ingredients you'll 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 the rabbit into one or another of these categories. Right right like we kill rabbits all the time for food or for but let's say somebody kills your pet rabbit that could be a felony. Wow. This was a pet with the name that changed sort of the protections that it had. It she had. Pronowns becomes this whole thing. Yes. Right right right. This is funny because it's like the other pronoun battle that you're not paying attention. Yeah yeah which seems silly but like it gets to 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 adoption 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 pretty wild. And you can really see the court struggling with this contradiction. Like there was this one case where dog was run over in front of his owner. The court says look, dog 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 dog. - A toaster. - Ah. - 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. - And they were bouncing around these categories too. Like on the one hand. - There were some pretty impassioned arguments about 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, kinda you name it growing up. They were my best friends. - I just love them, love animals. You know, it was 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, well 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 pigs dismissal. - Is there any value to a dead piglet? 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 had been 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 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, and I says, I'm not sure we're going to 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 would even budge. (dramatic music) So I went over and talked to this guy, and I really think we owe it to everybody, to us as jurors, to the defendants, to come up with a unanimous decision. (dramatic music) - The court clerk called me. - On the phone? - Yeah, well, said, you know, there's a verdict, you should come in. - Counselor, the jury just informed the day of the court, the judge calls the jury in. - Really? - I want the jury walked into kind of the jury seating area. And they walked in, you know, two single-fod lines, got into these two rows, eight jurors. 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 looked kind of avoidant. So boy. - The defendants were present. I asked the jury four person to identify the four persons. - The four person raised their hand. - Thank you, and so, sir, it has the jury reached. - The judge asks them if they had come to a unanimous decision. - Yes. - The man says, yes. - Man, they reach a verdict. Let's get ready. - The defendant's to stand, while the court. - Wayne stands up. - Clerk reads to me, the verdicts, and I'll ask that the people in the court will be ready to decide. - And the clerk starts to read. - The defendant who's out versus Wayne and since him, please, you know, the running work, 5-0-0-0-6-1, with the jurors and the above case, fine, and then Wayne and his and his, as well as County, wherever we have it. - First burglary? - Not guilty. - Not guilty. - Yeah. And then theft. - theft. - Not guilty. - Wait, what? Not guilty? - Whoa! - Whoa! - Post-not guilty! - I did kind of a double take. I was like, "Oh, we won." - Wow. Huh! And wow, I'm 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, the thought, this, like, metaphor, that really, like, helped her kind of come to her decision 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, it has value to me. "It's the living, breathing animal. "It has a conscience. It's alive." And I said, "What if we put it in the hands "of sniff-filled 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 Smith Field, who he took it from, so 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 that was agreed upon by all parties. - They felt like they were following the letter of the law. But at the same time, this other juror 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, I thought 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, Smith Field 245, like one of the jurors told us, - I don't remember a lot of things from that trial, but I remember those two piglets 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 hooked 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 a legal sense, not much, really. - Wow, that's not the answer I just said. Did you ever gonna say? - So, 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 an appeals court. And within an appeals court, you know, it could change case law, but this-- - It was 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. - Whoa! - For taking them. - So that actually backfired. - God, legally in Utah, it 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 are, they're like, okay, well, that was a disaster. They don't wanna 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 this whole value debate. - Right, 'cause otherwise we're drawing attention to this thing that we don't wanna draw attention to. Like, if they're just avoiding, they're ducking the fight. Totally, like, there was this whole other case in Wisconsin where two weeks before the trial was supposed to start, they dropped the charges. - Yeah. - And he and his team actually wrote it and they're like, "No, we still want this trial." - Everything about this guy's story and these legal cases feel upside down, you know? But if you think about it, it makes sense. Wayne actually needs the court. He needs this platform to force people to really sit in the confusion and grapple with these questions. - Right. - You know, like, one of the things Justin told us is - Often people can just turn away. If you're uncomfortable with something, you just look away or you have an explanation. But these cases don't allow it, right? You're on the jury forced to confront 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 sort of like the pigs, like that element of it? Has that come up? - 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 jog on Saturdays and kind of my thing was I'd come home and cook up some bacon. My daughter said, "Well, you can't do that anymore. You get to eat bacon and more." And she said, "Oh, right, that's true." And so it did kind of change. But you do, 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 every protein meat from animals is gonna be used by a good portion of the public. But can it be done in a way that's humane? They were on a farm. They're not in these processed facilities. Were they're in a cage? Where can we find that? And we actually found a place north of us here up in Parallel. - I'm not gonna lie if I see like a nice dollar slice pepperoni or something. It still is appealing to me, but it's just not something that I've gone back to. (gentle music) - Maybe despite the fact that 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, we'll see animals. - Increasingly, science and sort of our own human understanding of animals is making it clear that animals are not property. And that's part of the reason that I enjoy talking to these jurors and have spent 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, "Huh, 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. (gentle music) (gentle music) (bell ringing) This episode was reported by Sindu Nyanisamandhan and Jay Menard and produced by Sindu Nyanisamandhan with help from Pat Walters, who's edited by Alex Nisen and Pat Walters, and fact-checked by Diane Akeli. Special thanks to Kim Naterfane Peterson, Nathan Peerboom, Joe Idman, Sam Cosloff, Rachel Gross, and Alex Io. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what happened to the piglets, Lillian Lizzie? - Yeah, so after Wayne took them from the farm, he brought them to this sanctuary where they were nursed back to health, and kind of bizarrely, someone's after the trial, the jurors, they actually want to go visit them like Justin invited them to do that. - Interesting. Last time we had seen them, I mean, teeny tiny little piglets, like a mango, little teeny thing, we were just amazed to see these. - And massive animals. - Wow. - Anyway, the thing that really stood out that they said was this one little detail about how they looked. - Their skin is so white. - They're white. It's just this 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 sunburned. - Huh. - Yeah, and I just have this image stuck in my head of Lillia 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 sunburned. - Hi, I'm Gabby. I'm from the Bay Area, California, and here are the staff credits. Radio Lab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Lentif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandbach is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keef is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Cindy Naina Sambandan, Matt Kielte, Mona Magaoker, Alex Niesen, Sara Cari, Natalia Ramirez, Rebecca Rand, Anissa Vizza, Aryan Wack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Gabby Santos. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angelie Mercado, and Sophie Semi. - Hey, Radio Lab. Michael, Komah Washington, leadership support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Simon's Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. - Whether it's news from around the world or the latest from your neighborhood, New Yorkers engage with WNYC Studios for the information and connection they can only get from our programming. Be a part of that conversation through your business's support. Learn more at sponsorship.wnyc.org.