Slaughterhouse Vigil, Land Meats, Whanganui, NZ: 28 July 2019

Posted on July 29, 2019

End Animal Slaughter website owner Sandra Kyle does regular weekly, or twice-weekly, slaughterhouse vigils in her home town of Whanganui, New Zealand, under The Save Movement banner. 

Sandra has been bearing witness to animals going to slaughter for nearly four years, and putting her accounts and photos up on her Facebook page.  Here is her latest blog:-

‘I think of them now as the sun goes down and the temperature drops and the only comfort they have is the warm bodies of their friends. Tomorrow morning these warm bodies will become slabs of meat. If you are reading this and you eat meat, please think of them as you fill your supermarket trolley this week’.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE VIGIL, Whanganui, 28 July, 2019

Whanganui was in communicative mode today. In the two hours we were in front of Land Meats we received more than usual toots from the roughly 400 cars that passed (I’m basing this estimate on previous counts). I have recently had my cataract-correcting lenses cleaned, and my vision has improved. As a result I can now clearly see the expressions on the faces of the car drivers.

They fall into two categories: those who don’t react/those who react, roughly 50/50 percent. Of those who don’t react they are just pretending they didn’t see us. 😊 Of those who react we have the hornblowers (the ones who give short toots are approving, those who sit long and loud on the horns are usually hostile), the smilers, the friendly wavers, the stoney-facers, the gesturers (thumbs up and down, middle finger up), the headshakers (up and down and side to side) the yellers of expletives (the majority) the yellers of encouragement (only a few) the neck craners, the jaw droppers, a couple of times we have had the throwers (fruit and glass beer bottle) and for the first time today a man who took his hands off the steering wheel to clap!

Only one small truck arrived, and while Monica stayed on the road with the signs, I tried to get some photos. Several cows had their faces above the truck as the driver stood on the roof using his electric prodder. I kept missing the good shots (typical), but in the photos I took you can see part of the cows’ heads. The groundsman came out and took photos of me taking photos of them. As usual, I had a lump in my throat and not feeling at all humorous, but I should have done some posing. Like a model. Haha. Only thing is my sense of humour seems to escape me when I’m at the slaughterhouse. I wonder why…

I sang to the cows as they waited to be offloaded, and then sneaked around the side and took a very short video of them in the pen. I think of them now as the sun goes down and the temperature drops and the only comfort they have is the warm bodies of their friends. Tomorrow morning these warm bodies will become slabs of meat. If you are reading this and you eat meat, please think of them as you fill your supermarket trolley this week.

 

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