Today I learned how scientific achievements fly under a pig’s tail when faced with reality.
There’s this thing called precision feeding in pig farming. The gist is: a pig has an RFID chip attached to its tag (actually to its ear), and when it wants to eat, it sticks the tag into the feeder – and a special sensor reads its data and dispenses exactly as much feed from the machine as it should, also recording in a database how much and when it was given. If the pig sticks its tag in too early, the feed machine won’t dispense any. The idea is to reduce feed costs, improve growth and health of the animals, and lessen environmental pollution (less uneaten feed).
It seems like a great idea. However, such a system doesn’t work where there are large populations – it only works in specialized productions with few pigs, where almost all are known by name.
Why doesn’t it work on a large scale?
Because pigs are very cunning and quickly adapt. One pig inserts a tag, and then the one higher in the hierarchy chases it away and eats what isn’t meant for it.
Whole classes of oppressed arise, whose role is to insert the tag so that the authorities can gorge themselves. In the end, chaos ensues and no precision is achieved.
This is how pigs oppose technological progress.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 