Once again there has been an exposure by an animal rights organization. This time in a pigsty. More precisely, it was a breeding and fattening stable. If the animals can’t get out, then at least they have straw, pens in which they can romp and the mums have extra pens with their piglets, one for each mum. That’s what we’re constantly being told. You have to understand that not every farmer is able to keep the animals outdoors, but in the barn, it’s nice there, they have fun there and they’re fine. Finally, they are looked at. Just think, after all, that’s the farmer’s chapter. Because if the animals are not doing well, they will get sick and die. This is not in the interest of the owners who want to make money with it. The explanation makes sense, so you sit back and relax and think the animals are fine. Until you see the revelation and actually have to admit that you were constantly being lied to and allowed to be lied to. It’s also much easier to just believe and not ask any more questions, just look it up.

I still didn’t want to believe it because it all sounded so plausible. So, I drove to the barn where the exposure happened to see it with my own eyes. It would turn out that the recordings are probably exaggerated, and it really isn’t that bad. And I should be right. It was even worse. The pigs on fully slatted floors, which ruined the joints and made the feet ache. The narrowness that made it almost impossible to turn around. The boredom of having nothing to occupy themselves with caused them to start chewing on each other. The vapors from the faeces over which they had to spend the few months they were allowed to live led to eye and lung infections. Not one that was really healthy. But then the farmer’s wife led me to the sows, which were vegetating in cramped cages, with the piglets next to them. One thing in particular caught my eye. It seemed lifeless and lay a little apart. Did it still have the strength to get to its mother’s breast? When the farmer’s wife looked away for a moment, I grabbed the little one and hid it under my jacket. It didn’t move, let it happen without hesitation, as if it didn’t care.

I was happy when I was finally out again, out of the building that was called a barn and yet was nothing more than a factory building in which everything ran fully automatically, you didn’t have to water, feed or clear out the muck. Creatures that are seen as pure eating machines and treated as such. And we are constantly being told something different. We believe it because we want to believe it. And if something else is shown to us, the truth, the real conditions, then these are just exceptions, it is claimed. They promise improvement and everything goes on as before. A few days later it is forgotten again.

I had to go to the vet urgently. He looked at the little pig, which I already considered mine, and nursed it up as best he could. Now it runs around happily in the meadow, digs like pigs do and is lively and happy. I gave him the name Fridolin. A stolen life that probably shouldn’t have existed. A life that is completely indifferent. One up or one down doesn’t matter. It is the only thing this piglet has, a life that it wants to live. Even that has denied him, him and millions of fellow sufferers. That’s why I have a bad conscience. Not because I stole a piglet that would have died if it had stayed where it was, but because I had to leave all the others behind, helpless and at the mercy of animal abusers. And nobody says anything.

And while I rub Fridolin’s stomach, which he particularly likes, I dream of a world in which there are no more stables and no prisoners, no more mistreatment and exploitation, but only living beings that feel the sun, the wind and the Rains that snuggle up to keep each other warm and do nothing, have no use other than just living their lives.