Love in reshaping human-pig relationships: from livestock to companion

Abstract

In an increasingly urbanized world where pigs are predominantly never seen alive, whose dead bodies are understood as pork, the practice of pig keeping for companionship rather than food production offers a novel way to rethink human-pig relationships. Drawing from interviews with current and former pet pig keepers, one pet pig breeder and animal rescue workers in the UK, as well as ethnography at a pig sanctuary and the home of a pet pig keeper, this paper examines the ethical potential and political challenges of love in human-pet pig relationships. It describes how pigs are transcending the boundaries of their identity as farmed animals and occupying new spaces as loved pets, in turn, shifting their political and ethical status. Whilst love is a transformative affective force that disrupts societal understandings that dictate which animals are deserving of love and companionship and disrupts the subject-object and edible-inedible dualisms that frequently dictate societal understandings of pigs, these relationships also carry ethical tensions surrounding the commodification of pet pigs and the challenges of navigating care within a societal framework that primarily places pigs as livestock.

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