I’m standing in front of a stable, of course on a public dirt road. The doors and windows are tightly locked, but the screams of the pigs that are cooped up in this barn cut through the delicate illusion of rural idyll and leave a heap of broken glass. If I move even one step forward, step on the farmer’s property, I am violating property rights. Ownership is paramount. “The radical animal rights activists break into stables, that’s wrong,” it sounds like in my ears, “and what is right must remain right. Period. ”Yes, period, because in my property and with my property, I can switch and do what I want. Is that really true?

There are even limits to ownership and its use. So when someone else’s rights are encroached upon. What is more encroachment on someone else’s rights than simply letting them die without medical care or keeping them under circumstances that make them sick? But these pigs are also property. Nevertheless, my personal feeling tells me that I shouldn’t handle a pig like I should handle a chair. If I toss a chair against the concrete wall so that it splinters into a thousand pieces, it may be an act of vandalism, but it is my right if the chair is mine. But if I throw a piglet headfirst against a concrete wall and kill it, that’s okay, according to the advocates of absolute property rights, because animals are still considered a thing. You have no rights. Even if animal welfare is now in the constitution. A national goal. Section 5 (1) of the Federal Law on the Protection of Animals states: „It is forbidden to inflict unjustified pain, suffering or harm on an animal or to make it extremely afraid.“ If the piglet is not inflicted unjustified pain and irreparable damage if I throw it on the wall to kill it? Or is the yield a justification? A piglet that is not healthy costs too much. The vet has to come. Medicines must be administered. That is why it is killed. “No, the farmer doesn’t do that,” they say, “He won’t kill his livelihood.” Well said, not thought through. The invoice includes 25% scrap. Collateral damage. A quarter of the animals die during rearing. That’s included. If he doesn’t kill an ailing animal, it will keep eating. It will grow badly. It is a bad investment. „And how do you know that the farmer does that if you don’t look into the stable or did you break in and violate his rights?“ I received photos and videos of people who do not want to be named. After all, you don’t want to get in trouble. You shouldn’t see that the little boar simply perishes after castration without anesthesia. The point is not that it cannot happen. Nobody should see it. The miserable conditions just became public. The farmer stands in front of the stable and weeps. Because of the bad gossip in town. If no one had discovered it, everything would have continued as before, as always. But radical animal rights activists open the stable doors wide and show the unjustified pain, suffering and harm. Then they are punished and imprisoned. You, the animal rights activists. Then the stable doors are closed again and everything is back to how it was. The law is satisfied. Property is more important than life. Just like in the laboratories. Animals in laboratories are specifically excluded from the Animal Welfare Act. Science matters more than life. Even if no one can explain why animal testing is done. Except to make a lot of money with it. No matter how you turn it around, in the end profit always takes precedence over other laws, unwritten. As soon as someone earns, the creed seems to be that there is justification for all pain, suffering and harm. You don’t say it. But there is no other reason. You can’t go and say that the billions of victims were completely pointless and useless. They are not, because they have made a lot of people a lot of money. The breeders. The laboratories. The scientists. And where else could you live out your sadism indefinitely without being punished for it, more than that, you also receive awards. Rene Descartes nailed his dogs publicly before he cut them alive. Today it happens behind closed doors. People no longer understand it. They don’t understand, it is said. But as long as it is done in secret, all is well. Then we can still pretend it isn’t true and anyone who produces evidence will be punished. It’s that easy to make.