We were very lucky to have the chance to visit a piggery—guests are not exactly invited there. My host nervously requested me several times not to show my feelings there, since the owners were really nice people and did lots of charity and all that. I assured her that I would be diplomatic but was not willing to lie about anything I felt. Luckily, I did not have to. No one asked me for opinions and the owners were not even there. And once I entered the place it was so hard to breathe that I had nothing to say.

Our guide first took us to the sows in the gestation crates. They lie on metal grating in the crate so that they can hardly move and certainly cannot turn around. They can stand up or lay down. Most of their excreta falls through the gaps but some of it stays on the grates. They are forced to lie on this, which naturally causes inflammation of their udders. Their little piglets are running around and nursing from this dirty udder. Pigs are as clean as cats or human beings, so its not hard to imagine what they feel in that situation.

Once the piglets are several weeks old they are taken away to fatten. The sow gets four days rest before she is impregnated again. The whole building is made of cement without a blade of straw, which is sad because I have seen how much the pigs at Farm Sanctuary loved to make their own beds out of straw. The floors get cleaned regularly but are still covered with poop. The air stinks of ammonia making it difficult to breathe. Our eyes turned red and watered, so no one could tell if it was tears at seeing this immense suffering, or just the ammonia. At that moment I was sure that the United Nations and the Food and Agriculture Organization’s claim that livestock produces more greenhouse gases than all the vehicles on the planet combined, had to be true.

The piglets grow from a birth-weight of 2.5 pounds to 250 pounds in just 6 months when they are ready for slaughter! In the past when it took them twice as long to achieve the same weight, the males would have to be castrated to prevent their meat from smelling of boar (the interesting things you learn when you hold your nose and listen). But now they are made to grow so fast that they are still babies at slaughter weight. These little 6-month old pigs came up to us and tried to make friends, licking our hands just as a dog would. They were sweet and inquisitive. I instinctively backed away not wanting to get attached to a being that would soon be slaughtered. My thought was that this is what we humans do, we disconnect just so that we can treat them the way we do and turn their blood into money.

I recently heard an eloquent podcast called Peace for Pigs by Colleen Patrick Goudreau of Compassionate Cooks. I always enjoy her podcasts immensely. You can hear this and others at www.compassionatecooks.org.

Nandita

Visit SHARAN online at http://sharan.crossroad-solutions.com/home.php.

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*SHARAN means “sanctuary” or “protection” in Hindi. It is also an anagram for Sanctuary for Health and Reconnection to Animals and Nature.

Through SHARAN, our aim is to:

* protect the environment by practising and spreading organic farming
* protect farm animals and disseminate information on how a vegan diet can
help save the planet as well as billions of farm animals from unfathomable

Photo: 6-week old piglets