Cute piglet from a Google search, hopefully safe and sound somewhere.
My friends, both vegan and omni alike, seem to be crazy for little piggies these days (BECAUSE HOLY CRAP THEY’RE ADORABLE!!!). My Facebook feed is wonderfully full of pictures and videos galore of these sweet babies, which, I believe, made this news even harder to bear. All I could picture in my mind’s eye when hearing about these piglets were all these adorable faces. Well, theirs’ and the glorious Esther.
Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection of The Humane Society of the United States issued the following statement:
“As tragic as this calamity is, what’s perhaps even more disturbing is that it was easily preventable. The National Pork Producers Council has fought tooth-and-nail to block commonsense rules that would require factory farms to install sufficient fire suppression systems like sprinklers. More than 400,000 animals have already died in American factory farm fires this year, and the lives of hundreds of firefighters have been endangered. The National Fire Protection Association has the opportunity—starting at a meeting this Tuesday—to implement meaningful rules that would help prevent these disasters in the future.” After this fire killed nearly 4,000 piglets in a North Carolina factory farm, the National Fire Protection Association should require similar facilities to have ceiling sprinklers. (FREAKING DUH, PEOPLE!!!!)
I haven’t seen anyone else write about this news, besides The Humane Society, which makes me think that either people don’t think it’s really newsworthy, or that it’s been swept under the proverbial rug of news. Either of which is a bummer.