Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a dark room, in a cage that is made to just fit the dimensions of your body kneeling down. You have been in this very position your entire life; you have never turned around, sat down, or got a walking break. You are constantly being whipped, stabbed, and tortured in any way you could dream possible. Not that you would want to. The smell of feces and dead animal emanates from every corner of the room. You dream of leaving someday, but you know that day will never come. In fact the worst hasn’t even come yet. You are a pig at a slaughterhouse.


Your whole life has been like this, as soon as you were born, they pick you up by your tail and literally throw you into a basket with other baby pigs. When you’re a few weeks old they pluck you up, hold you between their legs, and twist off your tail. No painkillers included. Then they throw you into the cage where you’ll be spending most of your life.



You’ve been in there so long that you have literally gone insane. Your gums bleed from biting the bars of your cage. You feel your open wounds from the constant whippings getting infected, you hope that would be enough to get the humans to put you down, after all they wouldn’t eat a pig with infections and diseases would they? Yes, of course they would. The humans don’t care about little diseases; they care about the profit, that’s all you are to them.


When your time comes to meet your fate, you are lead away by a man holding an electric prod to your back. You then hear a bloodcurdling squeal coming out of your own mouth as a giant hook is shoved in your pack. As the blood pours out of your mouth, the hook lifts you up just high enough so the man has a good aim when slicing your throat. To your surprise you happen to be one of the unlucky ones that survived that. You’re frantic twisting and turning causes the hook to rip right through your skin and you fall into a pool of your own blood. Now it’s off to the scalding tanks to burn off your hair, while you’re still alive. Then you’re cut up and served as some families Christmas ham. It seems almost hard to believe that almost 32,000 pigs go through this every day.


That’s how it is at most slaughterhouses in America, and yes that includes Smithfeild hams. It tastes so good, you hardly put any thought into what went on in the life of that animal. What that animal went through to get onto your plate. All the pain and suffering, the diseases, and the insanity. Bon Appétit!