I have come to learn that the city I currently live in was named Hog Town. Toronto has been killing hogs for over a century now! I don't mean just 1 or 2 here or there either! One pig slaughtering plant named Quality Meat Packers kills approximately 7,000 hogs per day and 35,000 per week! This makes the death toll around 1.84 Million per year! For what? A ham sandwich or a hot dog!! These numbers are staggering to me and I had to go see what this place was all about!
I showed up at 2 Techumseh and experienced a new level of awareness for myself. There were security gaurds scrambling around out front of where the trucks come in and where they come out. It is like a drive through pig drop off. The loaded trucks filled with upset and uncomfortable, exhausted pigs drive in one way and wait their turn while a truck is offloading. Now offloading is a story within itself.
When the pigs are being offloaded it all depends on the connection of the driver to the animals. In the case I seen this driver walked around with no shirt on and showed attitude. He was in the trailer and you could hear him zapping the pigs and the pigs were screaming constantly through out his presence in the trailer as they ran off into the slaughtering plant that they would meet their doom. The pigs you will see in the videos below are all deceased now and maybe at this point eaten already. There is no gore on the video but the sounds mixed with the understanding that they are living is real and spine chilling!
Video: On August 23rd I witnessed the offloading of a single truck while an empty one left and a full one waited. The screams of the pigs are in real time and not edited in place.
There was one security guard there that was very polite and talkative. He states in the video that he took a walk around the plant but couldn't stand being in there and had to leave because the smell was over-powering. I asked him later if he was going to go and eat a hot dog after. He told me that he doesn't eat pigs anyway due to his religion. He further stated that the one trucker with his shirt off was showing off in the plant and walking around zapping and kicking the pigs. Then he stated that they cannot even keep employees, they almost have a new crew daily. I finished our conversation with "Do you find it weird that you are protecting a place that kills pigs and you do not even choose to eat them due to your religion" He then shook his head in disbelief and said I am only doing this one day.
PETA had a demonstration outside of the Quality Meat Packers on June 21st - 2011. They were showing people that meat is meat. Animal and human meat are the same and sometimes or almost always people do not think about that in a manner that can really make you feel for these animals in a way you do not want them killed.
Video: On June 21, Peta and a couple dozen of animal rights supporters held a solemn and subdued protest outside Toronto's Quality Meat Packers' pig slaughterhouse at 2 Tecumseth.
"On August 18, 2011, five members of Toronto Pig Save bore witness and protested on "pig island" - a traffic island at Lakeshore and Strachan where transport trucks carry hot, dehydrated and often scared and scarred pigs to Quality Meat Packers - Toronto's pig slaughterhouse. These kind, highly sensitive and intelligent social animals deserve to live in a farm sanctuary rather than be confined in factory farms, transported without food and water, and then brutally "stunned" in carbon dioxide gas chambers and then shackled on one foot and hung upside down (after being "stunned" the pigs lose consciousness for about 1.5 minutes before they start blinking and later trying to stand up), then are bled and sent to a scalding tank to remove hair (some may be conscious at that point and suffer unimaginable torture)." ~ Toronto Pig Save (source with video http://vimeo.com/28063860)
Below are some photos I managed to capture while the trucks sat dorment with the pigs inside. These pigs come from farms all over ontario on a daily basis! Seven Thousand! This number just bothers me so much and its in my backyard! Toronto Pig Save are protesting this neighbourhood at least 3 times a week! They need more people with cameras - video or still - to help make a difference and shut them down! Right now Quality Meat Packers is paying out of pocket for security due to the protesting and that is just the start to making the goal happen! Truck drivers are not liking the cameras and attention and some have told Toronto Pig Save that they will be quitting since they do not like what they are doing.
Please join Toronto Pig Save in their actions to shut down a Pig Slaughtering Plant in the residential downtown of Toronto! You can visit their website here
Toronto Pig Save's mission is to make slaughterhouses have glass windows, including Quality Meat Packers - Toronto's pig slaughterhouse. Just like Paul McCartney said, "If slaughterhouses had windows, everybody would be a vegetarian." We are an animal rights and pro-labour group, in support of a Just Transition towards a food economy that is organic, local, and whole grain and plant based (that is, vegan).
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