I don’t know how Chris Christie plans to become president, but then again no one could have predicted George W. Bush, or for that matter Barack Obama, so we know that stranger things have happened. In any case, I’d love to see the guy’s political prospects fall apart over pork, and not the kind you’re thinking of. Rather, I’m hoping he’ll become a primary example of how reactionary food policy will no longer play.

Last week, Christie vetoed a bill that would have banned the use of gestation crates in New Jersey. Gestation crates, as you might know, are essentially solitary confinement jail cells for pregnant pigs. The mothers spend time during their “productive” years in these, unable to turn around and barely able to move back and forth. I would call that torture, and it would seem that forbidding that practice in your state would be the right thing to do.

Passage of the bill would actually have little impact. There are only 9,000 pigs in the whole of New Jersey. There are, however, 65 million pigs in the United States, over 20 million of them in Iowa (where crates are standard practice), which is clearly what Christie has in mind: a candidate who supports the status quo on agriculture in Iowa, where the hog industry is worth $7 billion, has it far easier than one who wants to shake things up.

Why a state that has almost seven times as many pigs as people should play a bigger role in determining who gets to be president than one (New Jersey) that has, say, 1,000 times as many people as pigs is another story, more about our dysfunctional political system than raising animals.