«My worst nightmare is of being buried alive or locked in a box. In total darkness, unable to move, unable to breathe, somewhere far away where no-one can hear me shout for help, and no-one cares.
This is what a pig farm is like.
In one huge shed I couldn't even see the far end. Hundreds of mother pigs were lined up in rows side by side. They couldn't turn round. Just a few steps back and forth. They were banging their heads against the bars. And screaming, screaming. The noise was terrible. Scientists say that pigs have the same mental ability of a four year-old human child. Seeing those pigs reminded me of a Romanian orphanage I once saw on the television, with rooms filled with little children chained to their beds, just rocking back and forth. That is what those pigs are going through, and worse. What we make them go through.
In another room, huge mother pigs were held down on the concrete floor by metal bars, so their newly born babies could suckle without being crushed. Many of them had sores from the bars, some were black with necrosis. It is not their fault they crush their babies. We breed them to be that enormous, and then pin them to the floor as punishment. In the wild, pigs are much smaller, and they make nests for cushioning, they are very good mothers, and very protective.
I saw a small baby, only just managing to stand, but he couldn't get to his mother to suckle. She couldn't reach him, she couldn't move. When we returned to this same room about an hour later he was dead.
One pig had half of her ears bitten off, and was covered with sores and bites - she had been painted with purple disinfectant. She was staring straight ahead, foaming at the mouth. she was such a sorry sight.
Before going into each shed I had to take a gulp of air and prepare for the stench. It is unbelievable. You can smell pig farms miles away if the wind is blowing. The ammonia from the build up of urine and faeces hurts your lungs, stings your eyes, permeates all your hair and clothes. The next day my lungs were still sore. I was in there less than two hours. Some of the mother pigs used for breeding are in those rooms 3 years or more.
We have manufactured a hell on earth, and then bred creatures to put in it.
We lie to ourselves and to our children that animals don't feel, or that their pain doesn't matter.
We stop them from doing almost everything that is worth living for. We confine them, cut parts off their bodies, stop them from choosing their own partners and forcibly breed them ourselves, take their children away, and then we kill all of them when we want their flesh or when they are no longer of use to us.
We hide the real animals away where we can't see them, and instead we invent cartoon ones whom we pretend are happy to serve us.»
