Are the pigs healthy? I think the sibling comment got to the heart of this a lot more directly.
There's an economic reward for keeping the pigs healthy enough to be harvested while spending the least amount of money on their environment. If this lowers the threshold for "healthy enough", or allows them to survive in an even worse, cheaper to maintain environment, that could introduce or exacerbate human health risks even if this change itself cannot.
There is also the animal welfare element, that has resonance to a lot of people. I am by no means a vegetarian, do not in principle object to killing animals for food. But the sheer scale of animal suffering in our food system gives me pause. I am reluctant to accept innovations that would allow us to increase the degree of suffering in exchange for an increase in output or decrease in price.
You absolutely can have both. The threshold to pass for at least "decently healthy" isn't that high and prices aren't that much higher than "normal" industrial farming.
There's an economic reward for keeping the pigs healthy enough to be harvested while spending the least amount of money on their environment. If this lowers the threshold for "healthy enough", or allows them to survive in an even worse, cheaper to maintain environment, that could introduce or exacerbate human health risks even if this change itself cannot.
There is also the animal welfare element, that has resonance to a lot of people. I am by no means a vegetarian, do not in principle object to killing animals for food. But the sheer scale of animal suffering in our food system gives me pause. I am reluctant to accept innovations that would allow us to increase the degree of suffering in exchange for an increase in output or decrease in price.