The Cobra Effect Essay

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Recommended: Policy as a key element in the policy making process

In the Freakonomics Radio podcast “The Cobra Effect”, producer Katherine Wells explores a problematic situation that affected the residents of Fort Benning, Georgia. With a population of over 120,000 residents, Fort Benning is twice the land area of Atlanta, Georgia. This is plenty of space for the thousands of pigs that inhabited Fort Benning. Retired Vietnam War veteran Bill Brickner described pigs as a nuisance and pointed out that only a handful of pigs can cause damage to military equipment. With the growing pig population in Fort Benning came a call to action. In the summer of 2007, Fort Benning officials established a policy named the “Pig Eradication Program” in hopes of decreasing the pig population. This policy called for a bounty …show more content…

As long as the slaughtering of pigs is approved by Fort Benning residents, cultural relativists would say that this policy is acceptable for them. Cultural relativists would also say that this practice is moral for the residents because it is accepted and encouraged by Fort Benning officials to kill pigs. As far as the selling of pig tails is concerned, cultural relativists would agree that it is fine as long as it is common practice among the inhabitants. Johnny and Jason Daffen of Daffen’s meat processing admitted that numerous people called them in hopes of purchasing pig tails from them. It should be noted that cultural relativists would not approve of this policy when it comes to a culture that forbids the slaughter of pigs. This means that in such a culture, the Pig Eradication Program would be immoral according to cultural relativism. Fortunately for the residents of Fort Benning, cultural relativists have no problem with the policy in their …show more content…

In addition to its ineffectiveness, the program is also immoral. A program that entails murdering a countless amount of pigs in a futile effort to control the population is not moral by any means. Sadly, the result of this program was the death of thousands of pigs within a 3 year time span. The fact that Fort Benning officials did not care about where pig carcasses were left is a testament to how disgusting and barbaric the program was. To make matters worse, pigs were only bred to be killed and have their tails removed. Above all things, greed was the prime motivator among those who participated in the pig slaughtering. To the inhabitants of Fort Benning, 40 dollars was worth more than the lives of thousands of pigs. With over 125,000 dollars paid off to bounty hunters, the program only benefitted those with aspirations of taking advantage of a flawed policy to make a profit. It is safe to say that this policy was lacking in its ability to produce its intended effect and its ability to be morally justified. A better alternative to the Pig Eradication Program is a program that involves researching where the large amounts of pigs are coming from and understanding how they are breeding so rapidly. Officials of Fort Benning would then have to focus on stopping pig breeding rather than individually killing pigs who were already alive. Such a

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