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For 167 young pigs from a North Carolina factory farm, World Vegetarian Day and World Farm Animals Day proved to be the luckiest days of their lives -- literally, life-saving ones.

Improbably, instead of being hoisted and having their throats slit in a Pennsylvania slaughterhouse, the pigs wound up snuggling in hay at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary (PSAS), a 400-acre farm-animal and wildlife refuge in Poolesville, Md. Some 30 hours earlier, residents along a Northeast D.C.
street reported to police an abandoned three-tiered truck crammed with pigs. D.C. Animal Control arranged for the pigs to go to PSAS.

However, getting the 220-some-pound, five-month-old pigs off the 18-wheeler proved no easy feat. After working long into the night and early the next day to clear the bottom and middle tiers, volunteers used a hastily built wooden ramp to reach dozens of hot, thirsty pigs stuck on the top tier. Squeals from frightened pigs carried into the distance. Once the pigs made it down the ramp, volunteers cooled them with gentle hosing and led them to a four-acre pasture for rest. Several VSDCers were among more than 30 volunteers who came from D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia to help unload and settle the newly emancipated pigs. Unfortunately, three pigs were found dead on the truck and another died shortly afterward from porcine stress syndrome.

It was an emotional day for pigs and humans alike, as the animals went from suffering in cramped metallic quarters to meandering in the grass and wallowing in mud holes.  "These pigs are just the happiest they've been in their lives, running and frolicking all over," said volunteer Paul H. Shapiro, who co-founded the D.C.-area grassroots group Compassion Over Killing in 1995. However, while playing with the pigs and feeding them chunks of apples, carrots, and potatoes, many activists kept worrying when Hanor Co. factory farmer James Arnold might show up to claim the pigs for slaughter. After extensive negotiations, PSAS won custody of the pigs in exchange for waiving the almost- $12,000 caretaking bill the farmer had accrued in two days. With that deal completed, "I looked around at the pigs in the hay, so comfortable, and I had this incredible feeling, because they had escaped almost-certain death," said Terry Cummings, who co-founded PSAS in 1996 with her husband, Dave Hoerauf (both vegans). WRC-TV 4, WTTG-TV 5, WUSA-TV 9, cable's News Channel 8, WTOP-AM/FM, the Associated Press, Washington Post, and two local papers covered the rescue.

But few pigs will be so lucky. Based on FARM's analysis of federal data, an estimated 119 million pigs -- more than 90 percent of them from factory farms -- will be slaughtered or die of stress and diseases in the U.S. food system in 1998, part of a 9.407 billion overall toll of land "food" animals. Just five days before the pigs' rescue, more than 400 animal lovers attended the first PSAS fundraiser on 27 September. VSDC bought a half-page ad in the commemorative program, both to support PSAS and reach potential
members.

PSAS desperately needs donations and volunteers. Write PSAS, P.O .Box 507, Poolesville, MD 20837 or call 301-428-8128.

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