Nothing Says "Respect" Like Disrespect

by Stephanie Ernst · 2009-06-05 06:55:00 UTC
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I came across some disturbing photos this morning that I'm not going to share with you, that I refuse to give space on this blog. But I'll describe them. One is of the barbequed head of a pig, which people have adorned with sunglasses and an Elvis Presley wig. Another is of a mother or grandmother and two children posing gleefully next to the whole body of a roasted pig on a table, and though I've seen roasted pigs before, this photo was particularly disturbing because the way the animal's body was stretched out and the look of his infant body's burned skin reminded me remarkably of what it looks like when a human's skin has been badly burned in a fire. And yet here, the burned body was being happily posed with, an apple in his mouth and cherry tomatoes in his eye sockets.

Then finally, there was the photo of the two small children, with even younger (live) childlike pigs surrounding them. One child is wearing a shirt that reads "I love my pig." The child to her right is wearing a shirt that says "I love bacon more" and holding up to her wide-open mouth a piece of the burned flesh on a fork, with one of the pigs right up against her. Their parents clearly thought setting this up was hilarious.

All of these photos were taken at pork industry events or taken for a pork industry contest. Animal ag likes to talk about how much they respect their animals, how they are "grateful" to the animals they kill. Killing animals is supposedly serious, somber business.

How glad I am that they don't respect me.

Stephanie Ernst wrote the original Animal Rights blog at Change.org until December 2009. She can now be found at Animal Rights & AntiOppression.
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