1.
His pigs followed him like household pets
Into the empty livestock trailer,
Trusting the curly-haired young man
Of the kind voice and the gentle touch
Who had always brought them their food.
They followed their boy with doglike faith
From the trailer onto the runway,
Snuffling, fascinated by the myriad smells
As he led them onto the scale.
Then their Judas goat slipped through a gate,
Abandoning his charges to their fate.
After they've been weighed
There's a sudden flurry of shouts
And a barrage of paddle-swats
That drives the panicked beasts
Toward the man with the brand.
After they've been tattooed
They're driven into the wet-down,
The prelude to the chute that leads
To slaughter by asphyxiation.
The curly-haired boy waits patiently
For his payment in the Hog Office;
Hr grins happily as the check is cut.
He knows now that his 4H project
Has brought him in enough money
To buy a new PlayStation.
2.
The fast food chain representatives
Have sent out a "slaughter check" team
To ensure that their standards
Mandating "Humane Slaughter,"
That oxymoron spawned of guilt,
Are being adhered to.
No shouting at the hogs,
No kicking or striking them,
Just gentle nudges and a calm voice.
Sure, they're going to be slaughtered,
But the aim is to make becoming a McRib
Or the sausage in a breakfast biscuit
As stress-free a journey
As a hog can possibly aspire to.
The hog-drivers mask their frustration
As they try to move them under the conditions
Imposed by "Happy Meal" hypocrisy.
By lunch, when the team departed,
The kill total was down three hundred hogs.
That afternoon the chain-speed was cranked up
And it was back to "business as usual,"
As the hogs were treated like swine again.
The kill made up the three hundred hog shortfall
By the end of the shift.
3.
"Christ, he's not doing what I think he is,"
I hoped as I came upon the scene.
Big Ned, a hard worker, yet somewhat slow,
Yet perfect for the monotony of line work,
Where an imagination can be detrimental,
Had ambled out to visit a friend in the hog barn.
He had discovered an electric shock prod
That some trucker had inadvertently left behind.
"Watch this," he said, showing off for his buddy
Who had laughed as he gave a pig a zap in the snout
And had given another one some volts on its ass.
"See that old boar over there.
I'm going to nail him with this right in the nuts."
"Damn it! I bellowed, 'Put that thing down!"
I explained that although truckers could use it,
Even on the plant premises,
Under this plant's Humane Slaughter program
There are some pretty strict regulations.
Plant employees aren't allowed to use a shock prod.
If they're caught driving a hog with one
They can be suspended,
And tormenting the hogs for sport
Is just begging to be fired.
Big Ned looked as shocked at this caution
As a toddler who had just been told
That playing with his penis "wasn't nice."
Finally, he gave me a searching gaze,
And with disarming sincerity
He asked me, "What's the diffrence
What we do to them now?
They're all going to be
Slaughtered today anyway."
4.
The hogs in the subject pen
Have been culled out by the hog drivers
Or the ante-mortem inspector
For the plant veterinarian to examine.
Unable to move well enough to be driven,
Feverish, shaking, dragging a broken leg,
A ruptured belly or a boken pelvis,
The fourteen hogs lay in the subject pen,
Coping with their anxiety and hurt
By huddling close to one another,
Taking comfort in each other's nearness,
Like people.
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