‘Hell On Wheels’: How PETA’s Welsh pitstop hit pause on pork

Carys Bennett

Maybe you were sucking on someone’s ribs at Hickory’s Smokehouse in Cardiff when you spotted a lorry covered in graphic images of piglets bound for slaughter parked outside.

Or you were eating pork scratchings at The Flying Pig Swansea when anguished cries stopped you, mid-bite.

Wherever you were, those who saw – or heard – PETA’s “Hell on Wheels” truck, won’t soon forget the chilling sight and sounds.

PETA’s “Hell on Wheels” is a guerrilla-marketing campaign, a life-size pig transport truck plastered with images of real, sickly pigs crammed into a truck.

Blasting actual recorded sounds of pigs’ cries from its speakers, the truck is touring pig-themed venues across Great Britain all month and came to Wales on October 8 and 9 to change hearts and minds.

Like all animals farmed for their flesh, pigs are strategically hidden from public view.

Confined to giant sheds, most pigs – who love to bask – don’t even see the sun until the day they’re shoved into the crowded lorries that whisk them to their deaths.

Most people only interact with parts of pigs after their deaths, and PETA hopes that “Hell on Wheels” will bring to light the suffering that living, feeling pigs endure before they arrive on plates.

In all the ways that matter, pigs are no different to us, or the dogs with whom many of us share our homes.

They’re emotionally complex individuals who are soothed by music; enjoy playing ball, snuggle with their friends and family in “pig piles,” and can apply problem-solving to their lives.

They even wag their tails when they’re happy, and comfort other pigs who they sense are scared or stressed.

Female pigs are naturally doting mothers who ‘sing’ lullabies to their nursing piglets, but, for meat, they’re forcibly and repeatedly impregnated, confined to farrowing crates so small that they can’t even turn around, and have each litter of piglets taken from them.

Workers mutilate piglets, chopping off their tails and clipping their teeth with pliers, before confining them in filth and denying them everything they value, such as socialising, play, or foraging.

When the time comes, they endure long drives to slaughterhouses where they’re hoisted by a hind leg and have their throats slashed.

The ‘humane’ labels that are slapped on their body parts do nothing for pigs, who have been found languishing in excrement with painful, oozing wounds at RSPCA-Approved farms, and frustratedly biting at the tender prolapses of other pigs at Red Tractor Assured operations.

Cruelty and abuse are baked into bacon, and animals suffer in ways no promises can alleviate.

As the “Hell on Wheels” truck trundles on to its next location, it’s vital that we don’t let its message exit our minds.

Every single year in the UK alone, 10 million pink-skinned babies, barely six months old, are whimpering in lorries and screaming at slaughterhouses.

They make up some of the more than 1.2 billion animals killed for food in the UK every single year, all of whom are individuals, and all of whom suffer in clandestine confines that would be illegal if they housed dogs or cats.

You don’t have to storm blood-soaked kill floors or chain yourself to a claustrophobic farrowing crate to stop animal abuse; you simply have to choose the vegan option.

Delicious animal-free bacon, ham, sausages, and even ribs abound. Put those on your plate, and you help remove pigs from hell on Earth.

Dr Carys Bennet is Senior Corporate Projects Manager at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA.

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.