Oinking Acres Farm Rescue & Sanctuary Facebook ad: “In the wake of Reign’s loss, all we…”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

1096779533300408

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network

Relaunches

0

How we count

Ad text

In the wake of Reign’s loss, all we can think about is how hard this pig fought for survival and how tragically short her life was cut despite our very best efforts, all because of the system she was born into. We are enveloped in grief and anger and when we think about where fundamental change begins for animals like Reign, we know that it has to blossom on the ground floor of rescue, first, and so we come to our fellow rescuers with a plea: Please widen the circle. To those of you who dedicate your lives to saving dogs, cats, and other companion animals and already have welfare in your hearts, we are asking you to consider something that may be uncomfortable but desperately needs to be said, respectfully, and has long burdened our hearts—-Please acknowledge the pig. A pig feels fear just as profoundly as the dog trembling in the back of a shelter kennel. A pig seeks comfort, safety and companionship. Pigs are the third most intelligent grouping of animals on the planet. They form deep social bonds, recognize individuals, grieve losses, play, learn, communicate, seek affection and fight to live. They are not less deserving of kindness because our culture assigned them to a different category. Those of us in farm animal rescue live in an especially difficult corner of animal welfare because the animals we fight to protect are often the very same animals society has decided it is acceptable to exploit. And sometimes, painfully, that contradiction exists within animal rescue itself, particularly when we see shelters, humane societies and rescue organizations host BBQs, pork dinners and other meat-centered fundraisers to raise money for animals in their care. We understand the intention—bills need to be paid, animals need food and veterinary care, and fundraising is hard. We know firsthand how hard it is. But intention does not erase impact. When an animal welfare organization raises money to save one animal by selling the body of another, it reinforces the very hierarchy that those of us advocating for farm animals are desperately trying to dismantle: these animals deserve protection, while these animals do not. Imagine attending a fundraiser for abused pigs where dogs were being served because dogs happened to be culturally accepted as food. The discomfort would be immediate and the contradiction would be impossible to ignore. The pig deserves that same consideration. This isn’t about demanding perfection or attacking the people doing incredibly difficult and important work for companion animals. It is about asking our own animal welfare community to examine where compassion stops—and why, because the language we use matters. The fundraisers we choose matter. The messages our organizations send matter. When organizations entrusted with the concept of animal welfare participate in the commodification of other sentient animals, it tells the public that compassion is conditional upon species, and farm animals are already fighting from the bottom of an extraordinarily steep hill. These animals have dramatically fewer rescue resources, fewer safe places to land and an enormous system built around viewing them primarily as inanimate products rather than living, breathing individuals. Farm sanctuaries are trying to convince the public that the frightened pig standing before us is a someone, while, sometimes, our own colleagues in animal welfare are simultaneously reinforcing the message that pigs are something, and that disconnect harms more than one fundraiser—it harms the broader animal welfare landscape. We don’t expect every dog rescuer to become a pig rescuer or expect every cat shelter to become a farm sanctuary. We aren’t asking you to take animals you aren’t equipped to house or solve an enormous systemic problem overnight, we’re simply imploring you as like-minded individuals not to leave them outside the boundaries of your compassion. There are countless ways to raise money without making another animal pay the price. Host the spaghetti dinner, sell the pancakes, etc, please just let the message behind the fundraiser be consistent with the mission it supports—-animals deserve kindness. Those of us rescuing pigs are fighting for animals who will rarely receive the public outrage, legal protections, financial resources or safety nets afforded to their companion-animal counterparts. We need the larger animal welfare community beside us—not unintentionally reinforcing the cultural attitudes we’re fighting against. If you believe a frightened dog deserves safety because their life matters to them, please recognize that the frightened pig does, too, and if you believe animals should not suffer unnecessarily, please don’t let species determine where that belief ends. If your organization exists because compassion can change an animal’s life, please extend that compassion far enough to include the animals society has taught us not to see. Those of you who dedicate your time, attention, mental and emotional fortitude and every spare moment to the rescue of the smaller four-leggeds, we see you and deeply appreciate your contributions and sacrifices to secure their welfare. We don’t ask that you rescue pigs to stand with them, we just ask, please, that it’s acknowledged that they are worth rescuing, too.