“What we saw were distressed mothers with their baby piglets around them, cramped in farrowing crates, in the disgusting heat of Queensland,” animal rights activist Arkadiusz Swiebodzinski tells The Animal Reader.
Thirty animal rights activists planned a protest at a pig farm in Queensland, Australia. A farm that treats pigs badly. When the activists arrived, police officers were in front of the farm.
Two protestors managed to get inside. They filmed the small, cramped space where a mother pig was lying. She couldn’t even turn to cuddle her babies.
While Swiebodzinski and his friend were filming, they were brutally attacked by police officers. They were put in chokeholds and dragged outside from the back of the farm. Police didn’t want to be filmed, so they made the two walk under barbed wire, through bushes and fences to get to the police car.
Swiebodzinski is part of Meat the Victims, a growing global community of citizens willing to enter farms to show the world how animals (the victims) are being treated in there. He was aware that he could be arrested and took the risk for the animals but he wasn’t expecting the brute force in which they took him.
“I had no warning, the cop just came from the back out of nowhere and put me straight in a chokehold, punching me in the process,” he says about the arrest.
His jaw still hurts, and he has a bruise on his arm, but that’s nothing compared to the suffering the animals endure daily, he says.
βI think the point here is that we will not stop at anything, the police can be there protecting, but we are ultimately there for animals and we will do anything in our power to do what we can,” Swiebodzinski.
“Us trespassing is nothing, those animals are living, suffering every day and the least that we can do is try to jump a couple of fences with our cameras and show the public what really happens inside.”
Meat The Victims plans mass trespasses on animal farms to film what’s happening inside. They then share the footage with the media and on social media, to show the public what’s happening.
“The society is ignorant to what truly happens inside there (farms). They’re being fed lies from animal agriculture (lobby). The industry spends billions of dollars every year to pull wool over the eyes of people. And show them lies, that pigs are running on fields, that chickens are free, that cows are happy to be milked,” Swiebodzinski says.
Leah Doellinger, the founder of Meat the Victims, has been charged 22 times since 2017 for trespassing and ‘stealing’ animals. Animals who she tries to ‘steal. she saves and gives a chance at a good life.
Recently, a judge decided in her favor and did not convict her. She did have to pay a thousand dollar fine. Doellinger doesn’t have a criminal history. All her charges are of the same kind, saving animals.
Doellinger had visited the farm, where Swiebodzinkski was dragged out, before. When asked if anything had changed for the animals on the farm, she says: “One thing has changed, the security of the place. Itβs a lot harder to get inside and the fences are higher, the barbed wire is thickerβ.
According to them, itβs very common for farmers to change their security instead of the way they treat animals.
The next Meat The Victims depends on the situation with COVID-19 worldwide.
Donate