One of the worst parts of incarceration, many say, is knowing if a fire breaks out the guards aren't going to save you. They're not going to rush back into the prison building and risk their lives. Why would they? If your life had any value, you wouldn't be locked up in the first place.
That's exactly what happened to 10,000 pigs who perished in factory farm fires in Canada and Indiana in the past month.
8,700 pigs burned alive at Netley Hutterite Colony in Manitoba, Canada about 30 miles north of Winnipeg on April 2.
The pigs were housed together in a 900 foot by 80 foot barn with only six full-time and two or three part-time employees caring for them.
Efforts to stop the fire by cutting a path through the barn with a bulldozer failed when it "got hung up" on the factory farming style manure pits beneath the stalls.
"At one point we heard a big squeal and it was ear-shattering," said Tom Hofer, a retired hog worker, with tears in his eyes
"You could hear them scream," agreed Markus Hofer, a teacher who also witnessed the blaze.
On March 11, firefighters were called to Cardinal Farms Sow Farm, 55 miles northwest of Indianapolis, IN where 2,500 pigs were burned alive as fire engulfed a hog farrowing and nursery barn.
The facility, owned by Agrivest Inc., the largest farrow to finish hog producer in Montgomery County which produces more than 100,000 hogs annually, is still in operation.
Fritz Holzgrefe, owner/operator of Agrivest Inc., thanked firefighters and the Red Cross and promised to do "what we have to do to get the mess cleaned up."
No cruelty to animal charges were filed against the farm owners or operators.
The Netley fire is not the first factory farm fire at a Hutterite Colony whose members follow the teachings of Jakob Hutter in sharing communal goods and observing pacifism at least toward humans. In the past two years, fires at Vermillion Farms Colony and Rainbow Colony, both also near Winnipeg, have incinerated 3,000 and 5,500 pigs, respectively.
Nor is it the first big Indiana fire.
Less than a year ago, firefighters from eight departments in three counties responded to a fire that killed all the hogs, thought to be in the hundreds, on a farm in White County, IN near Otterbein.
Some owners of burned hog farms are even repeat offenders.
Last June, 50 firefighters battled a lethal hog farm fire near Flora, IN, in the same building where 3,300 hogs perished in a fire seven years earlier--a fact Flora Volunteer Fire Department Chief Scott Sisson called "ironic."
Another horrific reason as you so well describe - the death of so many innocent pigs in a fiery furnace. These farm factories from hell should be torn down. Will we ever really care? Thanx Martha.
by
Suzana Megles (16 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 40 comments)
on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 6:37:08 PM
If those who say that the Lord will help them out of this without little regard for the burning alive of even one of God's creatures in their buildings of hell, sounds a little presumptuous to me. They should put a match under their finger and learn some empathy. God will judge them. Hebrews 4:13 says that we will be held accountable for EVERY creature.
by
Jan Fredericks (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 6:47:00 PM
