Bettie’s travels

How pigs enable new connections between human health innovations and industrial agricultural pork production in Denmark

Bibliographic Data

ID6452513
AuthorsEva Vibeke Kofoed Pihl (0000-0001-8141-6531, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume55
Issue1
Pages109-130
Publication date2024-08-16
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Studies of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/03063127241268772
PMID39150336
OpenAlexW4401639909
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited29

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper unfolds the past and present uses of pigs that structured the emergence of a pig model of gut-hormone based appetite control, leading to the current scientific breakthrough in treatment of obesity. While the hyping of next generation medications for obesity and type 2 diabetes centers on the efficacy and profits attached to these drugs, I unfold how science embedded in this development had the in-vivo and in-vitro travels of Bettie—an obese Göttingen Minipig pig—at its heart. Tracing how she became embedded in a circuit of vitality connecting industrial agriculture and science on human health, I show how both are governed by a shared valuation of pigs’ fat. Bettie’s fat, however, was not to be eaten. Instead, Bettie was consumed in knowledge production. For pigs to enter this new trajectory, Bettie emerged as a promissory site for extraction of molecular information made possible by new visualization technologies and representational strategies that allowed for the coupling of human-pig physiology at the cellular level. While her travels were spurred by the hope of discovery of small molecules, Bettie allows us to grasp an important shift in science, as the insights derived from her work emphasized the importance of physiology and the environment for human obesity. In doing so, she served as a visceral model. On a larger scale, Bettie’s entering science on human health reflects a recursive structure of knowledge in which the present problems with obesity and type 2 diabetes derive from the solutions to previous problems associated with alleviating hunger

Agriculture · Biology · Environmental health · Human health · Obesity · Pathology · Vitality · Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Medicine · Obesity and Health Practices

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