At Least Her Suffering is Over
An Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM Sandra Isobel Kyle
Facebook post, July 2021

The photo of the cellophane-wrapped pig’s face, together with the blood that spilled from her severed head, was taken at New World, a New Zealand supermarket chain. I cannot find the words for the pain and horror I feel at what we do to our fellow Earthlings.

pig's head

She lived a life of unremitting suffering As a squirming, pink baby she cried as her tail was cut and teeth clipped with no pain relief. She suckled from her Mumma, but was prevented by steel bars from getting close to her, and at just a few weeks old she was permanently separated from her and put in a steel enclosure.

A few short months later when she was old enough to conceive she was placed with a boar, then put in a sow crate so narrow that she couldn’t turn around. She rubbed up against her enclosure and her skin opened, and her mouth bled from biting the bars that contained her. Just before giving birth she was put into another prison, a farrowing crate. Here there was no straw for bedding; she couldn’t nest and properly nurture her piglets. In physical and emotional pain, her most basic instincts frustrated, she could find no relief anywhere. And inside, the stress hormones continued to eat away at her…

The day the truck came to take her outside of the dark, smelly, noisy shed she had spent her life in, she briefly felt what it was like to walk free, to feel the sun and wind on her face. But the journey was long and uncomfortable, and she could tell the others were worried. When the men with sticks started to drive her off the truck she suddenly smelt the blood in the air. Panic seized her, and she began to scream…

Her most basic instinct, the will to live, was soon to be taken from her as well…

The photo of the pig’s face, together with the blood that spilled from her severed head, was taken at New World, a New Zealand supermarket chain. I cannot find the words for the pain and horror I feel at what we do to our fellow Earthlings.

It is dark, primitive, unforgiveable.


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