How many people pass within two feet of a shark on a daily basis? Probably just shark researchers. How many people pass within two feet of a pig on a daily basis? Probably just farmers. There are thousands and thousands of farmers; and a handful of shark researchers.

To factor in the risk properly, you need to multiply the risk times the exposure rate, which is what the original post is trying to tell you! Even if a pig only bites once every ten years, if you spend ten years around ten pigs, you'll probably be bitten ten times! :-( If a shark only bites when you get near it, you'll probably never get bitten, because you'll never in your life be near one. (Seriously, who goes out swimming when there are sharks nearby?!?)

Pigs are dangerous because farmers get used to not expecting them to bite, and then one day, they do. Farmers are terribly bad at dealing with risk; they typically just ignore it, at least in my experience.

Farms are horribly unsafe places; if they were an industry, they'ld be illegal under most health and safety legislation. I did my share of stupid things as a boy: I got my foot stepped on by a horse, burned my hand on a wood stove, I don't know how many cows kicked me, I actually worked a few times dodging sixty pound hay bales falling from twenty feet up, (even after a falling bale broke my grandpa's neck; my God I was stupid!), I climbed wooden ladders that broke under me as I climbed them; and that was "normal life". Farm life is often just plain dangerous, and no one cares. My uncle is missing his leg from a baling accident, my grandfather nearly died when the bale broke his neck (he did die a few years later), and in general, farmers (at least in the places I worked) all treated health and safety as a "nice to have", not as a "requisite".

Bruce's point is right on the mark: we need to stop wasting money on shark warnings (not a real issue), and spend more money on dealing with real workplace hazards, on the farm, and within industry. -- AC