in the news
“
I don't think I'll ever be able to
forget the screams I heard today as
we bore witness to the slaughter
of nearly 2,000 pigs, their squeals
continuing for hours after the sun came up.
They could smell their deaths as clearly as
we could. They knew what was coming.
I've never felt so helpless in my life.”
This was how one volunteer described
her experience at the recent Sydney Pig
Save vigil, the first of its kind held at the
largest pig slaughterhouse in Australia
and the largest piggery in the southern
hemisphere.
Volunteers from Sydney, Newcastle,
Canberra and Wagga Wagga descended
on Corowa on the NSW-Victorian border
last month to bear witness to the immense
suffering of pigs.
Based on Gandhi’s principles of kindness,
compassion and non-harm for all beings,
the vigil was the first in an ongoing
program of peaceful events organised by
Sydney Pig Save, the local arm of the
global Save Movement.
Thirty-five volunteers stood in silence
on a public road near the piggery and
slaughterhouse at Rivalea in Corowa as
the sun rose, watching animals being
unloaded from trucks and forced into the
slaughterhouse, which is capable of killing
and processing up to a million pigs each year.
Like many slaughterhouses in Australia,
Rivalea uses carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to
render pigs unconscious before they are
killed. The RSPCA claims pre-stunning
with CO 2 is the most “humane” way to
incapacitate pigs. Although footage
captured inside the Rivalea gas chambers
in 2014, and published by Aussie Farms,
confirms that the practices are anything
but humane. In the footage, pigs are
roughly handled, and scream and struggle
violently for more than 20 seconds before
losing consciousness.
Vigil spokesperson Lisa Ryan says the
pigs’ screams were fully audible from
where the vigil participants were standing.
“The gassing of pigs prior to their killing
is supposed to render them stunned and
quiet. But pigs are highly intelligent and
engaging animals. Their screaming reveals
what any expert will attest; pigs are capable
of understanding something is wrong, and
they struggle and fight to the very end.”
The 35 vigil participants said they had
been deeply moved by the experience.
One said they could tell the moment the
killing started. “Those sounds and sights
will haunt me in my dreams. It is seared
into my memory, something I won't ever
forget.”
“Soon after the screaming stopped, the
cold transport trucks rolled in to take away
their dead bodies. Even after the killing
was over and it became eerily quiet, too
quiet, we could still hear it in the back of
our minds. I can still hear it now when
I close my eyes. And I know it will start
again with the rising of the sun tomorrow,”
the vigil participant said.
“To the animals: I'm sorry I couldn't
make them stop. I'm sorry I couldn't make
the pain more bearable. All I could do was
bear witness to your death, and try my
hardest not to turn away.”
Sydney Pig Save Vice-President Steve
Offner says the vigil was not about targeting
one company, which is merely a cog in the
giant wheel of industrialised food production.
“We are part of the global Save Movement
which is organising peaceful vigils outside
slaughterhouses across the globe to
highlight not only the opaque nature of
intensive animal factory farming and its
systemic cruelty, but also the difficult
conditions for industry workers and the
masking of the truth to consumers,” he says.
In Canada, a high-profile court case has
been underway in which Toronto Pig Save
co-founder Anita Krajnc was defending
criminal charges for giving water to
stressed and thirsty pigs confined on atruck waiting to enter a slaughterhouse.
“In Canada, as in Australia, farm animals
are legally defined as property,” Mr Offner
says. “As such, Anita Krajnc is deemed to
have interfered with something that was
not hers. The exploitation of this legal
technicality is, in our view, tantamount to
criminalising compassion."
Spokesperson Ms Ryan says the
immediate aim of the Corowa vigil was
to bear witness to suffering and to draw
public attention to the plight of animals in
intensive agriculture.
“Our intention is not to storm the
barricades. We believe Australians are
intelligent and compassionate consumers
and most would be appalled if they knew
the scale of the animal suffering and abuse
that occurs inside these piggeries and
slaughterhouses, just to get pork, ham and
bacon on their plates.”
“If we can alert more Australians to the
legalised cruelty and deception behind
their food production, they will be armed to
make more informed personal choices.”
Ms Ryan says the vigil was a powerful
but peaceful way to acknowledge the lives
of pigs killed for food.
“A vigil is unlike any other form of
action. It is not a protest, it is not a rally. It
is an experience between each person and
the animals. It is an act of compassion that
draws on the philosophy of bearing witness
and which says: ‘I see you; you are not
alone and your suffering matters to me’.”
Sydney Pig SaveHISTORIC VIGIL
bears witness
to suffering