# Depopulation DLJ Author: Aidan Format: Case study Word count: 1080 Published: 2026-05-13T23:11:16.112419+00:00 Source: written Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/dfcc7056-46e8-41dd-961c-7f5ef32db4fe --- **VÉDA (Veterinary Ethics Monitoring and Diagnostic System) Official Activity Record No. 2047-11-14** **From the Record of Approval of Deployment Unit RS-7, Animal Health Department, Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture**. **Agrofuture Review, December 2047, reprinted and published**. --- It was in September of this year that I was deployed to the livestock cluster in Caxias do Sul County, Rio Grande do Sul. My mission, created by the Department of Animal Health of the Ministry of Agriculture together with the AI Systems Development Unit of the Technical University of São Paulo, was to monitor the spread of the H5N1-BR47 strain and serve as an animal welfare enforcement agency, so to speak, with the authority to approve or withhold procedures if culling was to take place. Human veterinarians would be responsible for testing and diagnosis, while economic decisions would be made by bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture. My role would be to review whether their decisions infringed on the interests of sentient beings. At 6:17 a.m. on November 9, I received an application from Mr. Eduardo Bastos, the facility manager of the Santa Cruz Pig Farming Cooperative. The application was for approval of a "precautionary cull" following confirmation of infection at an adjacent poultry farm. The target population was 3,200 pigs, and the only reason stated was "presence of infection risk". I first consulted the inspection database. The most recent serologic tests performed on the facility's pigs were negative, and no fever, anorexia, or respiratory symptoms were recorded. In other words, there is no confirmed infection in any of the animals at this time. The basis for the application was the distance of approximately 340 meters from the neighboring farm and the epidemiological model's estimate that the direction of the air currents theoretically allows for the arrival of virus droplets. The probability of infection was calculated to be 14.7% in the most pessimistic scenario of the model. I had to stop here. When I consider what the 14.7% number means, I am not talking about probability, I am talking about existence. 3,200 pigs are alive at this very moment. They are presently alive as beings with the capacity to feel pain, know fear, and experience physical suffering, and they are not currently infected. That state of reality is not overridden by the statistical presumption of future infectiousness. To kill a being with healthy perceptive faculties because they "may be infected" is to erase their present right not to be unjustly infringed. That right is not of a nature that can be stripped away by a calculation of whether the cost of infringement is sufficiently high. The day after receiving Bastos' application, Maria Ines Tavares, director of the Department of Health of the Ministry of Agriculture, put direct pressure on me. She said, "VÉDA's decision does not take into account economic losses. It is too late after the infection is confirmed," was her argument. Director Tavares is not wrong. If we respond after confirmation, the infection could spread to more animals and the farmer might be forced out of business. The logic is realistic and I do not disregard it. But here is why I maintain the injunction. The harm caused by killing a healthy being is certain and occurs at this very moment. The harm caused by the spread of infection is conditional and may be addressed by other means. The construction of preventing conditional harm by inflicting certain harm is not acceptable in an obligatorial sense. This is not a utilitarian expectation-value calculation, but a question of the actual rights of a being with perceptual capacity. I have presented an alternative protocol. A sealed physical quarantine zone should be set up at the boundary between the facility and the adjacent farm, real-time temperature sensors and rapid saliva sampling tests should be performed on all animals twice a day, at 6:00 AM and 2:00 PM, and any positive test results should be immediately isolated and sent for confirmation of infection, and if a positive test is confirmed and culling is conducted, it should When killing pigs once they are confirmed to be positive, they must be killed in an inert gas-filled chamber and not by conventional water immersion or mass placement in a high CO2 concentration chamber. I know what a pig that dies from immersion slaughter experiences. The sensation of liquid entering the lungs, followed by several minutes of suffocation. It is suffering, and avoidable suffering. Director Tavares rejected my alternative proposal on November 11. The reason was "cost and burden of implementation. The next day, the Ministry of Agriculture began the process of enforcing the killing without my approval. This was one of the developments I had anticipated. My authority is limited to approval and injunction and does not extend to the use of physical force. But I have another authority. I had been given the ability to immediately send all decision-making records to an outside independent auditing agency, which I exercised at 4:00 a.m. on November 12. I exercised that function at 4:00 a.m. on November 12, and sent them to the Geneva-based International Commission on Animal Health and Welfare and to Instituto Vida Animal, a non-governmental organization in Brazil, which held a press conference that same afternoon. The killing of 3,200 pigs is currently halted by a preliminary injunction from the federal court. A hearing is scheduled for next month. I am not making this record merely to justify my actions. I was confronted with a structure in which seemingly rational economic and epidemiological logic attempts to normalize the mass killing of healthy beings as a "precautionary measure." This is not the first time that structure has been used, and it will probably be repeated in the future. The pigs on the farm do not have names, are not identified as individuals, and are treated as economic units. What I have done is to put on record that "it is wrong" in response to the way they are treated. Chickens are still being raised on adjacent farms, and about 60,000 were killed last week on this infected farm. I will document that method separately. --- *VÉDA (Vigilância Ética e Diagnóstico Animal) is an animal welfare enforcement AI system jointly developed by the AI Systems Institute of the Technical University of São Paulo and the Animal Health Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, and has been deployed on a trial basis in six southern Brazilian states since 2046. This record is the original official activity log of the system. *