What is a Pig Worth?

Summary

Radiolab – "What is a Pig Worth?" (May 1, 2026)

Overview

In this episode, hosts Latif Nasser and Jay Minard, along with producer Sindhunyana Sambandan, dive into the complex intersection of animal rights, the law, and societal values, centering on the criminal trial of animal rights activist Wayne Chung. Through the lens of Wayne’s dramatic rescue of two piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory farm—and the legal odyssey that followed—the episode explores the fundamental and often paradoxical question: What is the value of a pig? The story unpacks shifting legal, moral, and personal frameworks—showing how a seemingly straightforward act forces a courtroom, jury, and listeners to confront what animals really mean to us.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Wayne Chung’s Early Experience with Animals and Ethical Awakening

• As a child, Wayne’s deep attachment to his dog planted the seeds for questioning cultural norms, especially after witnessing dogs in cages at a restaurant in China that served various animals (02:34–04:34).
• Quote:
  “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.” – Wayne Chung (04:21)

2. From Activism to Felony Charges

• Wayne grows up, reads Peter Singer, becomes a legal scholar, and co-founds Direct Action Everywhere.
• His activism leads to the undercover documentation and rescue operation at Smithfield’s Circle Four farm—resulting in viral videos and, ultimately, criminal charges (burglary, theft) after rescuing two sick piglets, named Lily and Lizzie, which were later featured in a New York Times story (04:56–06:59).

3. Wayne’s Unorthodox Legal Defense

• Wayne defends himself in court, openly admitting to the rescue (09:16–09:33), but argues the piglets had "no value" due to their condition, making theft inapplicable.

• Despite being continually objected to, Wayne persistently tries to shine light on factory farm conditions, which the judge and prosecution repeatedly block (10:56–13:10).

  Notable Exchange:

  • Judge: “Smithfield’s not on trial, Mr. Chung, you are.” (11:00)
  • Latif Nasser: “Curious strategy for a defense attorney.” (09:36)

4. Jury’s Struggle: Value—Legal, Economic, and Moral

• Law requires “value” for theft; Wayne’s defense is the piglets were worth less than nothing (the cost to heal them exceeded their economic value) (14:13–15:50).

• The jury feels stuck deciding what kind of “value” matters: economic, inherent, or moral? The law gives no guidance; the judge leaves it up to them (22:03–22:44).

  Memorable Moment:

  • The judge requires Wayne to present cutout paper piglets to the jury instead of photos with their mother—prompting a juror to question what is being hidden (17:32–18:11).

5. The Big Legal and Philosophical Question

• Animal law professors are brought in to explain three frameworks for animal value in law:

  1. Property—animals as things to be used.
  2. Property + Human Value—animals as property but valued for the benefit they give us (pets, service animals).
  3. Quasi-Personhood—animals deserving protection for their own sake (rare, e.g., in testing bans).

• Context (pet vs. livestock, etc.) determines which framework is applied—even to the same animal (25:54–27:30).

  Quote:
  “A rabbit cuts across all these categories.” – Prof. Justin Marceau (26:56)

6. Jury Deliberations: Torn Between Law and Conscience

• Jurors debate for seven hours, oscillating between property arguments and appeals to the inherent value of life (28:32–29:49).
• One juror uses an analogy of a pig in a box: “If you’re holding this pig, this pig has huge amounts of value to you…What if we put it in the hands of Smithfield Farms? Does this pig have value?” (32:28–33:08)

7. Verdict and Aftermath

• Jury finds Wayne not guilty on both burglary and theft (30:34–32:02).

• Though not a legal precedent, the trial catalyzes legislative change: Utah passes a law barring the “worthless animal” defense for activists (35:18–35:32).

• Prosecutors elsewhere retreat to less risky charges (trespass instead of theft) to avoid public value debates (35:43–36:16).

• The case's real impact is forcing public, legal, and personal confrontation with animal status—a slow, emotional shift rather than a legal revolution.

  Quote:
  “Fundamentally, all of the field of animal law is about asking people to answer this question for themselves.” – Prof. Kristen Stilt (39:53)

8. Personal Changes for the Jury

• Post-trial, the jury bonds, socializes, and several jurors reflect on their own consumption habits. While shifts are incremental, at least one juror finds it “hard” to eat bacon after the trial (37:11–38:13).

9. The Fate of Lily and Lizzie

• The two rescued piglets recovered at a sanctuary, where the jurors later visited them and marveled at their transformation (40:18–41:11).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On facing hard truths:
  “When you look at the things that scare you, there’s a chance for a deeper truth to show itself.” — Jay Minard (00:52)
• On breaking rules for right:
  “Against the advice of pretty much all the attorneys I’ve talked to, I’m going to tell you exactly what we did…”— Wayne Chung (09:20)
• On legal paradox:
  “The logic flips…What kind of value are we talking about here?” — Jay Minard and Latif Nasser (21:55–22:03)
• On naming animals:
  “Once you start seeing people referring to them by the name, then conceptually, you’re recognizing that there’s something more than, you know, Smithfield245.” — Prof. Justin Marceau (34:09)
• On the legal impact:
  “He was too successful too early.” — Latif Nasser (35:13)
• On animal law’s slow change:
  “It’s going to be this incremental process that’s going to be hard sometimes…just like with the jurors, it’s going to be tearful.” — Prof. Kristen Stilt (39:53)
• Jury’s reaction to evidence:
  “We’re not going to let you see this because it could be too upsetting…” — Juror (17:54–18:04)
• The paper piglets moment:
  “I was just sitting at the defense table with a pair of scissors, cutting out eight little paper piglets…” — Wayne Chung (17:34)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment Topic | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------------|------------| | Wayne’s formative childhood experience | 02:34–04:34| | Smithfield farm undercover operation | 04:56–06:39| | Legal defense and courtroom battle | 09:16–15:50| | Cutting out paper piglets for jury | 17:32–18:11| | Jury struggles with defining value | 22:03–22:44| | Legal scholar frameworks for animal status | 24:49–27:30| | Jury deliberations & analogy of pig in a box | 28:32–33:08| | Verdict: Not guilty | 31:26–32:02| | Utah’s legislative pushback after trial | 35:18–35:32| | Post-trial jury transformations | 37:11–38:13| | Lily & Lizzie at sanctuary | 40:18–41:11|

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Conclusion

What is a Pig Worth? doesn’t lay out easy answers. Instead, it cracks open the messy, unresolved, and very human ways we grapple with animals’ status in our world: sometimes property, sometimes kin, sometimes something else altogether. The story arc, from Wayne Chung’s boyhood to a Utah jury room to a changed law, exposes how the law, just like the rest of us, struggles to pin down the value of a pig—or any animal—forcing society to look, debate, and feel. The episode leaves listeners reflecting on their own beliefs, appetites, and where we might be headed next.

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For further information:

• Direct Action Everywhere (Wayne’s group): https://www.directactioneverywhere.com/
• Background on the legal arguments: [Referenced animal law scholars: Prof. Kristen Stilt (Harvard), Prof. Justin Marceau (U. of Denver)]

This summary highlights the major themes, legal arguments, emotional beats, and thought-provoking moments of the episode, equipping anyone to engage deeply with the questions at its heart.

Transcript

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, wait, you're listening.

[Jay Minard]

Okay.

[Wayne Chung]

All right.

[Juror]

Okay. All right.

[Narrator/Producer]

You're listening to Radiolab Radio from wny.

[Juror]

See y.

[Latif Nasser]

Hey. This is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser joined by producer Sindhunyana Sambandan.

[Jay Minard]

Hey, Latif.

[Latif Nasser]

And what do you got?

[Jay Minard]

Okay, so this one, it starts when this guy Jay Menard joined my meditation group.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jay Minard]

We're also both journalists. And so, you know, one day we started talking about the kinds of stories we are drawn to. And, you know, we're both Buddhist, so we're interested in, like, impermanence, interconnection and suffering. You know, death.

[Latif Nasser]

And why death and suffering? Like, why is that a Buddhist?

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Wayne Chung]

Huh.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Narrator/Producer]

What?

[Latif Nasser]

Really?

[Wayne Chung]

Hey, how are you all?

[Jay Minard]

Hi, Wayne. This guy, Wayne Chung. Okay, nice to see you.

[Latif Nasser]

Nice to see you.

[Jay Minard]

So that's Jay. We actually ended up calling Wayne up together.

[Latif Nasser]

Great.

[Narrator/Producer]

He was in California at the time.

[Latif Nasser]

Oliver.

[Gabby]

Oliver's there.

[Jay Minard]

That's your dog?

[Narrator/Producer]

His dog was there.

[Wayne Chung]

Oliver, come here, buddy. Oh, good boy, Oliver, you're so happy.

[Narrator/Producer]

This little mutt, he's from China. And once Oliver settled down, Wayne started telling us about, oddly enough, his childhood dog.

[Wayne Chung]

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.

[Jay Minard]

Du Wayne grew up in this, like, small little town in Indiana, and as one of the only Chinese kids, had a lot of trouble in the friend department. But his family did have this dog.

[Wayne Chung]

And this dog was just the love of my life. Her name was Vivian.

[Jay Minard]

And this, like, black Labrador mutt, every

[Wayne Chung]

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.

[Jay Minard]

Like they were taking a family trip.

[Narrator/Producer]

Okay.

[Wayne Chung]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

It's like a vegan restaurant or something like that.

[Jay Minard]

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 aquariums and you could pick what you want, Right? It's like that, except like there's every kind of animal.

[Wayne Chung]

One of the things we saw was like, like a monkey in a cage. Oh, wow. Like with a chain around his neck. But then like I heard barking from the back of the restaurant. He like turns around and I saw a little black dog, you know, probably like 30 or 40 pounds, just huddled in a cage.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, man.

[Juror]

Yeah.

[Jay Minard]

And remember, he's like a nine year old kid.

[Wayne Chung]

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. In Chinese culture, you do what you're taught. There's this Chinese term guai, that every kid in Chinese culture wants to be.

[Narrator/Producer]

Guai.

[Wayne Chung]

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 a 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.

[Narrator/Producer]

So Wayne grows up, goes off to college, reads Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, becomes a vegan, goes on to law school, becomes a law professor. W 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.

[Wayne Chung]

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

[Jay Minard]

He co founds this group called Direct Action Everywhere.

[Wayne Chung]

Folks, we are about to march into a massive factory farm in the heart of darkness and hell.

[Jay Minard]

Among other things, they break into factory farms and videotape everything to show people what the farm is like inside.

[Wayne Chung]

The only way to make this violence stop is for people to take direct action.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Wayne Chung]

So circle four is a farm that processes and kills 1.2 million pigs every year.

[Judge]

So.

[Narrator/Producer]

So Wayne's standing in this kind of scrubby desert field at twilight with four other guys.

[Wayne Chung]

Paul's going to be manning the camera. The rest of you are going to help me with logistics and supplies.

[Narrator/Producer]

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.

[Wayne Chung]

Our naming 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? Lets do this.

[Narrator/Producer]

Then the video cuts to night.

[Wayne Chung]

Alright folks, we're in goth are heading to circle four. This is the heart of evil.

[Narrator/Producer]

They flip their headlamps on and go in.

[Wayne Chung]

This facility is massive. Even just this one barn you can see down here, aisle after aisle after aisle.

[Narrator/Producer]

So they're walking around filming things and eventually they come across a litter of piglets.

[Wayne Chung]

And this little piglet in the corner here, face is covered in blood and she's down on the ground.

[Narrator/Producer]

And this time they take two of the piglets out with them.

[Jay Minard]

And you know, after the video got published in the New York Times, Smithfield issued a statement saying they'd 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.

[Wayne Chung]

Two counts of burglary and one count of felony theft.

[Jay Minard]

Each of which could lead to years in prison.

[Narrator/Producer]

Yeah.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Narrator/Producer]

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.

[Wayne Chung]

Welcome.

[Judge]

We're on record in the matter of state versus plain shunned.

[Narrator/Producer]

The trial begins on October 3, 2022 in western Utah. We're in this Cherrywood courtroom.

[Judge]

The state is prepared to go forward.

[Narrator/Producer]

On one side you have the prosecution, a man and a woman, both attorneys for the state, Mr. Schwal. And then on the defense, Wayne.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, he's representing himself. Yeah. Huh.

[Narrator/Producer]

And he told us that he was feeling pretty nervous because you're waiting for

[Wayne Chung]

these people who are going to decide you're fake to come in.

[Judge]

All rise for the jury.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

Oof. Not great odds. Yeah.

[Jay Minard]

I mean, a lawyer he talked to had, like, begged him to take a plea.

[Wayne Chung]

She described the situation as hopeless.

[Narrator/Producer]

No kidding.

[Jay Minard]

But he wanted the fight.

[Narrator/Producer]

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, so the trial begins with prosecution. The facts in this case will show they argue. Basically, among other things, this is simple.

[Judge]

Mr. Wayne Shaw entered an unauthorized area owned by Smithville Farms.

[Narrator/Producer]

Wayne broke into the farm without permission

[Judge]

of the owners, removing two of the pits.

[Narrator/Producer]

Took two piglets stealing. You know, there's really no question about it.

[Judge]

They actually filmed themselves doing it. We have it on video, then posted the video online.

[Wayne Chung]

Then, good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

[Jay Minard]

It's Wayne's turn.

[Wayne Chung]

Against the advice of pretty much all the attorneys I've talked to, I'm going to tell you exactly what we did on the night of question.

[Jay Minard]

And he says, it's true.

[Wayne Chung]

I did remove two piglets from Smithfield Foods on the night of March 7, 2017.

[Jay Minard]

I did it.

[Latif Nasser]

Curious strategy for a defense attorney.

[Narrator/Producer]

Exactly.

[Jay Minard]

Well, you know, Wayne says, for better

[Wayne Chung]

or worse, we weren't trying to hide what we had done.

[Jay Minard]

Like, in fact, he's like, the video

[Wayne Chung]

should just be playing for it.

[Jay Minard]

Play the video.

[Narrator/Producer]

And the prosecution is basically like, we

[Juror]

have an order from the court that

[Jay Minard]

we would not talk about.

[Narrator/Producer]

No, no, no, no. We're not showing the video. And Wayne's like, no, come on. I want you to show the jury what happened.

[Latif Nasser]

Why? Why can't he play the video?

[Jay Minard]

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

[Wayne Chung]

You can already hear the screams of the mother pigs inside.

[Narrator/Producer]

And when you watch it, they're suffering.

[Wayne Chung]

And we're gonna try and expose what's

[Narrator/Producer]

actually happening inside, you can understand. 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.

[Wayne Chung]

These mother pigs are desperate to get out of the crates. They're smashing their heads up against these crates to the point that they have swelling on their faces, cuts on their faces.

[Narrator/Producer]

And the prosecution was like, that's not what this is about.

[Wayne Chung]

The judge said over and over again, smithfield's not on trial, Mr. Shung, you are.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

Huh?

[Jay Minard]

Because an animal doesn't have rights, like, a person.

[Wayne Chung]

You can't file a legal Complaint on their behalf.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jay Minard]

But if Wayne gets arrested doing one

[Wayne Chung]

of these rescues, thrusting ourselves in the

[Jay Minard]

position of the animal, then his thought is, I can put Smithfield on trial through, you know, having.

[Latif Nasser]

By putting myself on trial. Yeah, I see.

[Narrator/Producer]

So even though they rule that he cannot show the video.

[Wayne Chung]

Mr. Chapman, my name is Wayne Chung. I'm the defendant and counsel in this case. I'm going to ask you a few questions to follow up on what Mr. Christensen asked you. Is that all right?

[Judge]

No problem.

[Latif Nasser]

Thank you.

[Narrator/Producer]

Whenever he starts questioning a witness.

[Wayne Chung]

Mr. Topping, you testified that you viewed a video of an intrusion.

[Narrator/Producer]

You see him kind of sneaking in,

[Wayne Chung]

but you had no knowledge of this intrusion prior to that video.

[Narrator/Producer]

And little details about the conditions of the farm.

[Wayne Chung]

That's probably because there are lots of

[Narrator/Producer]

piglets in Smithfield, basically trying to get them to just.

[Wayne Chung]

In fact, there are thousands of pigs even at a single farm like yours.

[Narrator/Producer]

Correct. Describe what was in the video.

[Wayne Chung]

It's also true that among those thousands of pigs, many of those piglets end up dying before they reach slaughter. Correct.

[Jay Minard]

Object at this point, but when he does that, the prosecution objects.

[Wayne Chung]

And then she said previously that you cannot see the piglets inside because the building is completely enclosed.

[Jay Minard]

Wayne tries again.

[Judge]

I think the line of question we're going down is leading us toward our management practice.

[Jay Minard]

The prosecution objects again.

[Wayne Chung]

So then I'll ask you just about gestation.

[Jay Minard]

But Wayne does the same thing again.

[Wayne Chung]

Thousands of diet pilgrims at Smithfield foods at any given point.

[Jay Minard]

Another objection.

[Judge]

Sustained.

[Wayne Chung]

If animals at Smithfield do have injuries or disease, they are often discarded. Correct.

[Jay Minard]

Wayne just keeps doing this.

[Wayne Chung]

And piglets that are discarded into dumpsters, presumably these piglets are not sold for me. Correct.

[Judge]

I think this is the fifth time I've stood and objected to the slight question.

[Wayne Chung]

Your honor, I'm just trying to establish.

[Judge]

It's sustained. I don't want you mentioning that again.

[Narrator/Producer]

Wayne's obviously getting nowhere.

[Wayne Chung]

Your honor, I'm just trying to establish.

[Judge]

I have sustained the objection.

[Narrator/Producer]

He's pissing off the judge.

[Juror]

I thought Wayne was a little cocky.

[Narrator/Producer]

And not just the judge.

[Juror]

He's either, you know, really full of himself, hopelessly outmatched, or both.

[Narrator/Producer]

You know, we talked to a few of the jurors.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, wow. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

[Narrator/Producer]

And they said at this point, it didn't even seem like Wayne was acting like a real lawyer.

[Juror]

He's an activist.

People close down freeways just to get their point out there. I actually think that does a disservice, at least to me.

[Narrator/Producer]

You know, they felt that he was kind of using this trial to grandstand.

[Juror]

I wasn't particularly happy about being tied up for a week.

[Narrator/Producer]

And most of them, they just wanted to get this over with.

[Juror]

We need to be out of here

[Narrator/Producer]

by Saturday for game day and go watch football.

[Juror]

Utah's playing UCLA this weekend, so that's kind of my focus. Was not. Was just getting done through this.

Whatever we can do to speed this along, we're gonna do it.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, man.

[Jay Minard]

Yeah. So, you know, Wayne's strategy to make this about Smithfield, like, it's really not working.

[Wayne Chung]

But then the first piglet, Lily, was suffering a very serious foot injury.

[Jay Minard]

He starts to focus on these two particular piglets that he took, which he names Lily and Lizzie.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Wayne Chung]

She was starving to the point that she was approximately one fourth the normal size.

[Jay Minard]

Objection, you, Honor.

[Juror]

He's still talking about the conditions of the animals.

[Jay Minard]

Prosecution objects, like always.

[Wayne Chung]

This is about the individual piglet who was removed now, so the valuable pig,

[Jay Minard]

but this time, the judge allows it.

[Wayne Chung]

This is a piglet who had wounds all.

[Latif Nasser]

Huh. Why?

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

Huh.

[Jay Minard]

So at the very least, he has to be able to talk about the objects he took.

[Latif Nasser]

Sure. Yeah. That makes sense.

[Wayne Chung]

So then tell us about these two individual pigs and the condition.

[Jay Minard]

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

[Wayne Chung]

It shows the diarrhea was explosive.

[Jay Minard]

He calls a veterinarian to the stand. Sure. Stan Rosenberg, who argues.

[Juror]

I don't think she had more than

[Jay Minard]

a 5% chance of surviving. The piglets probably weren't going to make it without the attention of a vet, which, you know, isn't cheap.

[Juror]

It would cost a minimum of $315

[Jay Minard]

to give her the care of that she needed.

[Narrator/Producer]

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

[Wayne Chung]

farm, what would be the value of

[Judge]

your 10 to 12 pound piglet, which

[Narrator/Producer]

another vet had testified was about $40, $42.20. If you do the math, these piglets would have been worth negative $272.

[Latif Nasser]

Whoa. Huh? So the. So the money to rehabilitate them was more than the money that they were worth at the time.

[Jay Minard]

Exactly. Which Wayne argued would mean he didn't technically commit theft.

[Latif Nasser]

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.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Wayne Chung]

I'm going to move now to Exhibit 3.

[Jay Minard]

And in particular, he's arguing, like, the farm, they. They don't see the pigs.

[Wayne Chung]

This is video footage of Lizzie the piglet shortly after we first saw her.

[Jay Minard]

Like, you can really see this happening in this one moment where Wayne is trying to introduce this clip of one of the piglets.

[Wayne Chung]

And what does the video show? It shows Lizzie's blood covered face.

[Jay Minard]

And, you know, the prosecution objects, like

[Narrator/Producer]

always, you want to distinct objects.

[Jay Minard]

We have thing like, you know, the blood on the piglet's face, that could have come from the mother, and it's not really about her.

[Latif Nasser]

But the health of the piglet clearly depends on its relationship with the mom. So I don't know.

[Jay Minard]

It's 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,

[Judge]

look, this is my concern. I'm not sure it's appropriate to show this.

[Jay Minard]

We shouldn't see the mom. So how about you just, like, print out a still shot and then cut out the piglet?

[Judge]

That's when I was allowed to go to the jury.

[Latif Nasser]

This is so weird.

[Juror]

Yeah.

[Wayne Chung]

I was just sitting at the defense table with a pair of scissors, cutting out eight little paper piglets. Looked like something from a second grade art class. And I just thought to myself, this is just stranger than fiction.

[Juror]

Whoa.

[Narrator/Producer]

And when the jury got these little cutout pictures, hey, you, you group of

[Juror]

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 bias. And I just, you know, it pissed me off.

I remember holding this paper in my hands, looking at it, as Wayne's describing it, I thought, why did you have to cut the paper?

[Narrator/Producer]

They told us at this point, they started to think like, what is it you don't want us to see here?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Juror]

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.

[Jay Minard]

But before they could make any decision, we got the closing arguments.

[Judge]

I think it's clear that the pigs were stolen.

[Jay Minard]

You know, the prosecution says, imagine the

[Judge]

use of the word rescue in some other context.

[Jay Minard]

The piglets did have value to the farmers. Like, even if they were sick, you can't just take them.

[Judge]

Suppose you were in the grocery store and you saw a can with Danson.

[Jay Minard]

They compared the piglets to a dented can.

[Latif Nasser]

Dent. Oh, the runt piglets are dented cans.

[Jay Minard]

Exactly. And, like, you can't just take a dented can from the store.

[Judge]

I gotta rescue that can, put it in my purse, taken out of the store.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Narrator/Producer]

But in 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.

[Wayne Chung]

If you defend our right to give aid to dying animals, to defend the right of all citizens to aid dying and sick and injured animals, companies will be a little more compassionate to the creatures under their stewardship. Governments will be a little more open to animal cruelty complaints. And maybe, just maybe, a baby pig, White Lily. You won't have to starve to death on the floor of a factory farm.

[Jay Minard]

The trial comes to a close, and after that, it's in the hands of the jury.

[Narrator/Producer]

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

[Juror]

The room was split about 50.

50.

[Latif Nasser]

Huh?

[Juror]

There was one that was not guilty, two that were pretty sure they were guilty. And then there was this mix in the middle of unsure.

[Jay Minard]

And where were you in that?

[Juror]

I was the unsure.

I wasn't sure what I was gonna do and whose side I was on.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jay Minard]

And since it's a criminal case, they need a unanimous vote, right?

[Juror]

Okay, let's do this.

[Jay Minard]

Okay. So they first decide they're gonna tackle the burglary charge. And the technical definition of burglary, they're

[Juror]

told, is you're in a place that you're not supposed to be with the intent to take something of value.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Justin Marceau]

If.

[Juror]

If we find an animal in need, we'll do what we have to do. If.

[Wayne Chung]

If.

[Jay Minard]

And this if they argue like it frees him from intent huh.

[Juror]

We unanimously agreed you couldn't charge them with the burglary.

[Jay Minard]

So burglary done, next. They have theft.

[Latif Nasser]

He did take the thing.

[Jay Minard]

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?

[Juror]

Just value. So, yeah, they just said it has to have value.

[Narrator/Producer]

And you have to keep in mind here, there's two types of value in the room. There's the economic value, 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. 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.

[Wayne Chung]

Mm.

[Juror]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

What?

[Narrator/Producer]

Yeah, it's a. It's a paradox.

[Jay Minard]

Like, the logic flips.

[Latif Nasser]

Flips, yeah. Right. Bizarre.

[Juror]

It's. It's a conundrum.

[Jay Minard]

The question becomes like, what kind of value are we talking about here?

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jay Minard]

And so they're like, okay, well, maybe we just ask the judge.

[Juror]

You know, we went and 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 Smithfield? Is it to Wayne?

Is it us? Is it the free trade market? Is it the New York Stock Exchange 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 all week and just get some fresh air.

[Jay Minard]

While they deliberated, they're asked to come back, and they're handed a paper that has the response from the judge. From the judge. And what that paper says is, it's

[Juror]

for you to decide.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, they're missing that game.

[Juror]

Yeah.

[Jay Minard]

Yeah. And, like, this, to me, is, like, sort of crazy. It's like, how is there no answer to this question?

[Latif Nasser]

We will watch the jury try to find one and try to find some answers ourselves right after we take a very quick break.

[Narrator/Producer]

We'll be right back.

[Latif Nasser]

Welcome back. This is Radiolab. 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.

[Jay Minard]

Yeah, we actually ran the situation by

[Kristen Stilt]

Justin Marceau, and I'm a law professor at the University of Denver, Kristen still

[Jay Minard]

at Harvard Law School, couple animal law professors. It's kind of crazy to me that there isn't a clear definition. Value seems like such a vague term.

[Kristen Stilt]

Well, yeah. I mean, yes and no, right? I mean, it rarely comes up.

[Jay Minard]

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

[Kristen Stilt]

The value is we know how much your car is worth. We could figure out how much your printer is worth. We could figure out how much your computer is worth.

[Jay Minard]

But when you ask that same question

[Kristen Stilt]

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.

[Jay Minard]

It gets weird.

[Kristen Stilt]

Like, that's a strange scenario because this

[Jay Minard]

value question, like, it quickly gets us to this much bigger question.

[Kristen Stilt]

What is an animal in the law?

[Jay Minard]

Like, what even are they?

[Justin Marceau]

That's a big question. That is the big question.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kristen Stilt]

I like it.

[Latif Nasser]

It's a great question.

[Narrator/Producer]

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

[Justin Marceau]

with three big buckets.

[Kristen Stilt]

This three part framework, three ways of

[Narrator/Producer]

thinking about these questions. Uh huh.

[Justin Marceau]

And the first is they are property.

[Kristen Stilt]

They are just ours to use.

[Narrator/Producer]

Like just think about how we farm animals that we eat.

[Latif Nasser]

This is just like. Just stuff. Yeah, yeah.

[Kristen Stilt]

They just exist to do what you want to them. Category two is a view in which

[Justin Marceau]

we may still see animals as property, but we value them insofar as we benefit.

[Narrator/Producer]

Basically, animals are property that mean something to us. Okay. Think of a pet or a workhorse and therefore we protect them.

[Kristen Stilt]

Laws passed in that vein would be done to help animals, but the ultimate beneficiary is humans.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Justin Marceau]

And then the third approach is that animals, well, they have some approximate equality to humans. Approximate.

[Jay Minard]

And this one they told us is harder to find. An example could maybe be animal testing bans on chimpanzees.

[Kristen Stilt]

We're providing protection for them because we think it's the right thing to do for them.

[Juror]

Yeah.

[Jay Minard]

So anyway, it's a helpful framework. But the problem is, like, any certain type of animal can actually fit into more than one bucket. What is that?

[Justin Marceau]

This is a rabbit, the rabbit.

[Jay Minard]

Like, consider a rabbit.

[Juror]

I feel deeply connected to rabbits.

[Justin Marceau]

A rabbit can be a pet.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Wayne Chung]

Messed him up.

[Justin Marceau]

A prey animal.

[Jay Minard]

You know, something you hunt for sports.

[Justin Marceau]

A rabbit can be an animal.

[Narrator/Producer]

Biomedical research with rabbits is behind the

[Jay Minard]

development of most prescription drugs.

[Justin Marceau]

Who's tested upon in the lab?

[Jay Minard]

These lab rabbits, they actually have more protections than the ones that are raised,

[Justin Marceau]

almost like in a factory farm for

[Juror]

fur, mittens and liners, hats.

[Latif Nasser]

You're just gonna need a few ingredients. You'll obviously need some rabbit or for

[Wayne Chung]

food, I'm going to cut the rabbit,

[Latif Nasser]

and you just twist it off.

[Justin Marceau]

A rabbit cuts across all these categories.

[Latif Nasser]

And it's just context here. Context is the thing that slots the rabbit into one or another of these categories.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

Wow.

[Jay Minard]

This was a pet with a name that changed sort of the protections that it had. It, she had Pronouns becomes this whole thing.

[Narrator/Producer]

Yes.

[Latif Nasser]

Right, right, right. This is funny because it's like the other pronoun battle that you're not paying attention to.

[Narrator/Producer]

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?

[Jay Minard]

Right, 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.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, wow, that's cold.

[Jay Minard]

On the other hand, when you die, you can leave your dog or cat all of your money.

[Kristen Stilt]

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty wild.

[Narrator/Producer]

And you can really see the courts struggling with this contradiction. Like, there was this one case where a dog was run over in front of a owner.

[Justin Marceau]

The court says, look, staug was a

[Narrator/Producer]

family member, and the family got to sue for emotional distress.

[Latif Nasser]

Wow.

[Narrator/Producer]

And then there was this other case in Texas where they ruled, yeah, the dog is property.

[Justin Marceau]

And then they literally say, not like a toaster.

[Juror]

Okay.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Juror]

The value of the pig meant something different to different people.

The conversation was all over the place.

[Jay Minard]

And they were bouncing around these categories, too. Like, on the one hand, there were

[Juror]

some pretty impassioned arguments about, you know, the inherent value of life.

[Jay Minard]

There was this religious view in the room.

[Juror]

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.

[Jay Minard]

You know, it was a group of people that cared about animals, but also some of them had strong feelings about property.

[Juror]

Somebody brought up, like, an example of, if I have a rust bucket of a lawnmower sitting in my backyard, can somebody just come in and take it and go, oh, they're not using it.

You know, what If I had a paperclip in my hand, would it have value to me? And someone else would throw it away?

[Jay Minard]

Which sparked a lot of conversation about the value of the pigs to Smithfield.

[Juror]

Is there any value to a dead piglet? You know, are they put into fertilizer? Are they put into feed?

[Latif Nasser]

Wow, they are really going all over the place here.

[Jay Minard]

Yeah.

[Juror]

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 had 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 sit and allow the mind to just kind of calm a little bit.

And I went up to the one gentleman, 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 agrees with you and see if you guys would even budge. So I went over, talked to this gal. I said, I really think we owe it to everybody, to us as jurors, to the defendants, to the pro, to come up with a unanimous decision.

[Wayne Chung]

The court clerk called me on the phone.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Wayne Chung]

And said, you know, there's a verdict. You should come in,

[Judge]

counsel. The jury is informed.

[Wayne Chung]

Judge calls the jury in. When the jury walked into kind of the jury seating area, and they walked in, you know, two single filed 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 look kind of avoidant.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, boy.

[Judge]

The defendants were present. I asked the jury four person to identify.

[Narrator/Producer]

The four person raised their hand. The judge asks them if they had come to a unanimous decision.

[Judge]

Yes.

[Narrator/Producer]

The man says, yes, man.

[Wayne Chung]

They reach a verdict. Let's get ready.

[Narrator/Producer]

Wayne stands up, clerk reads the verdicts.

[Judge]

And I'll ask that the people in the courtroom to remain silent.

[Narrator/Producer]

And the clerk starts to read.

[Judge]

State of Utah versus Wayne Hanson, case number 181500061. We, the jurors in the above. The above case, find the defendant, Wayne Hansen, as follows.

[Jay Minard]

Count two, first burglary.

[Judge]

Not guilty.

[Latif Nasser]

Not guilty.

[Jay Minard]

Yeah. And then theft.

[Wayne Chung]

Wait, what? Not guilty.

[Latif Nasser]

Whoa. Both not guilty.

[Wayne Chung]

I did kind of a double take. I was like, oh, we won.

[Latif Nasser]

Wow. Huh? And, wow. I'm now so curious what these jurors said happened behind the scenes.

[Jay Minard]

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 apparently helped a lot of the jurors in the room.

[Juror]

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 juror's name, and I says, 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 a living, breathing animal. It has a conscience. It's alive. And I said, what if we put it in the hands of Smithfield Farms? Does this pig have value?

[Latif Nasser]

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 value there. Not a crime. Like, basically, this logic just lets the jury vote for whoever they wanna vote for. Right?

[Jay Minard]

I mean, some of the jurors we spoke to didn't see it that way.

[Juror]

I did it by the books. I did what was legally presented to me on a document that was agreed upon by all parties.

[Jay Minard]

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

[Juror]

answer to the question of value, gave me the instructions of it's okay to make that moral decision.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Justin Marceau]

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. Smithfield245.

[Jay Minard]

Like one of the jurors told us,

[Juror]

I don't remember a lot of things from that trial, but I remember those Two piglets names.

[Latif Nasser]

Hmm.

[Jay Minard]

And according to Justin, who actually interviewed all the jurors himself for his own

[Kristen Stilt]

research, I mean, I think there were some moral pulls there, but they were still looking for a legalistic, you know, kind of hook to land on.

[Jay Minard]

Both these ways of thinking were in the room. Like, they both played a part.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, so. Okay, now just zooming out. What did this case change after everything?

[Narrator/Producer]

Well, in a legal sense, not much, really. Wow.

[Latif Nasser]

That's not the answer I expected you were gonna say.

[Narrator/Producer]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

But this is funny. He was too successful too early. Yeah.

[Narrator/Producer]

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.

[Latif Nasser]

So that actually backfired. God.

[Narrator/Producer]

Legally in Utah. It does sort of seem that way.

[Jay Minard]

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.

[Justin Marceau]

They don't want to go through that again.

[Jay Minard]

Let's stop charging these activists with theft and, you know, maybe just charge them with trespass so we don't get into this whole, like, value debate.

[Latif Nasser]

Right. Cause 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.

[Jay Minard]

Totally. Like, there was this whole other case in Wisconsin where two weeks before the trial was supposed to start, they dropped the charges. And he and his team actually wrote in, and they were like, no, we still want this trial.

[Latif Nasser]

Everything about this guy's story in these legal cases feels upside down, you know,

[Narrator/Producer]

but if you think about. Makes sense, Wayne actually needs the courts. He needs this platform to force people to really sit in the confusion and grapple with these questions.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jay Minard]

You know, one of the things Justin

[Kristen Stilt]

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 that.

[Judge]

Right.

[Kristen Stilt]

You're on the jury, forced to confront it.

[Jay Minard]

And that's exactly what happened to the jurors in this case. And going through that, it bonded them.

[Juror]

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.

[Narrator/Producer]

You know, they would get together over dinners.

[Juror]

One of the jurors brought over his pizza oven. We've actually got to be pretty good friends.

[Jay Minard]

I'm curious, have you guys talked at all about, like, eating pork or like the sort of, like the pigs, like that element of it? Has that come up

[Juror]

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, cook up some bacon. My daughter said, well, you can't do that anymore. You can't eat bacon anymore. All right, that's true. And so it did. It kind of changed. 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 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 humane. They were on a farm. They're not in these processed facilities where they're in a cage. Where can we find that? We actually found a place north of us here up in Parowan.

I'm not going to lie. If I see, like a nice dollar slice of pepperoni or something, it still is appealing to me, but it's just not something that I've gone back to.

[Jay Minard]

Maybe despite the fact that, like, there's not really legal precedents in this case and there's this 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.

[Kristen Stilt]

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 have spent so many hours doing so from different cases, is people who have never thought about animals and the law and their status, when they are confronted with these issues, they do overwhelmingly say, huh, that's interesting. And whether they acquit 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 going to be hard sometimes, just like with the jurors, it's going to be tearful. But fundamentally, all of the field of animal law is about asking people to answer this question for themselves.

[Latif Nasser]

This Episode was reported by Sindhu Nyana Sambandhan and Jay Minard and produced by Sindhunyan. Then with help from Pat Walters. It was edited by Alex Neeson and Pat Walters and fact checked by Diane A. Kelly. Special thanks to Kim Naderfeyn Peterse, Nathan Pierboom, Joe Eidman, Sam Kozlov, Rachel Gross and Alex Ayo.

[Juror]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Latif Nasser]

What happened to the piglets, Lily and Lizzy?

[Jay Minard]

Yeah. So after Wayne took them from the farm, he brought them to this, like, sanctuary where they were nursed back to health. And kind of bizarrely, some months after the trial, the jurors, they actually went to go visit them. Like, Justin invited them to do that.

[Latif Nasser]

Interesting.

[Juror]

Last time we had seen them, I mean, you know, teeny, tiny little piglets, like a mango little, teeny thing.

We were just amazed to see these massive animals.

[Latif Nasser]

Wow.

[Jay Minard]

Anyway, the thing that really stood out that they said was this one little detail about how they looked.

[Juror]

Their skin is so white.

[Jay Minard]

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 Lily and Lizzie, 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.

[Gabby]

I'm from the Bay Area, California. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soran Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandbach is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walter. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz, Gutierrez Sindhu, Naina Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Mona Margauker, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Natalia Ramirez, Rebecca Rand, Anissa Vitze, Arian Wack, Molly Webster and Jessica Young, with help from Gabby Santa. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angeli Mercado, and Sophie Samay.

[Narrator/Producer]

Hey, Radiolab. Michael, Tacoma, Washington.

[Judge]

Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is

[Jay Minard]

provided by the Simons foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.

[Narrator/Producer]

Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.