Real-Life Decision Making
You are an animal behaviorist for a large agricultural consortium. The
company informs you that your analytical skills are required at one of their
newly acquired pig farms. They tell you that the pigs on this farm are not
reaching their desired weight in time for the market, and therefore are not
reaching their full production value.
"Animal behaviorists are brought in to consult on the different ways to
control or change the behavior of animals, or as the industry calls it, 'domestic
animal management,'" says animal behaviorist Wayne Goodey.
In order to solve this mystery, you have to do some research. According
to Goodey, "Animal behaviorists do not work in a vacuum and their findings
are usually built upon previous work" from others in their field.
From your research, you learn there are numerous reasons why pigs might
lose weight. The pigs are biting each other, thus getting sick due to infections
caused by the scrapes; the pigs cannot digest the chemicals or preservatives
in the feed; or tougher pigs are preventing the weaker pigs from eating sufficiently.
The pigs may be constantly fighting, the stress of which causes them to lose
weight.
With research in hand, you are prepared to identify what the problem is
and why it is occurring.
The farm manager shows you to the pigpen. You spend hours observing the
pigs in their environment. They are not showing any signs of behavior that
might cause them to lose weight. The pigs are not fighting; they are eating
well and resting well. You cannot find a reason why the pigs are not gaining
their appropriate weight.
From your experience and by analyzing past research on this topic, you
suspect that something in the feed is causing the pigs not to digest their
food properly. "Even though the pigs are swallowing the food they need, the
pigs are not digesting the nutrients completely due to their physiology being
incompatible with kinds of chemicals in the feed," says Goodey.
To find out for sure if this is causing the pigs to lose weight, you will
have to experiment on the animals. You will have to get someone to take biopsies
of tissues and do blood tests to see if there are any foreign chemicals in
their system (which might prevent them from digesting their feed properly).
The manager doesn't want you to take samples from the pigs. He finds
that your methods are intrusive and might damage the product. Without the
blood tests and the biopsies, you cannot rule out the feed as
the contaminant that is causing the pigs to lose weight. If a pig dies while
you are completing your study, the manager says he will hold you personally
responsible for the loss.
What do you do?