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152 13 an appetite for justice lauren ornelas it was a hot day in North Carolina and the sheds were all locked, except for one, which contained a dead, bloated pig and a smaller pig. As I walked in, I saw what I had been smelling. On each side of me, there were rows upon rows of pigs in pens. Hundreds of them. Looking down the middle aisle, I saw a huge bloated pig and what looked like a plastic bag. I began going pen by pen to videotape the victims—one pig with an injured leg who struggled to lie down, another with an abnormal growth under his belly—all very curious , yet with pleading in their eyes. Finally, I made my way down to the end of the alley, to the bloated pig. As I started to videotape and photograph this poor, diseased individual, I realized that the plastic bag I had seen behind the dead pig was actually a smaller pig who was still alive, but very weak. The pig stretched his hooves under the bars of the pen as if trying to reach the other pigs, who did the same. This pig was very sick. Instead of caring for him, the workers had thrown him in the middle of the aisle where he would have no access to food or water and where he would eventually die. The same must have happened to the bloated pig. I had investigated numerous factory farms. Why did this incident hit me so hard? Why do those two pigs remain etched in my mind? Looking back, at that moment I came face to face with ongoing, blatant, heartless disregard for millions of sentient nonhuman animals in our food industries. At each farm I investigated I picked out one individual and did everything I could for him or her. I did not always choose one who was dying; sometimes I would focus on an individual who was somehow able to show a semblance of his or her natural being even while suffering in the worst of circumstances. i-xvi_1-192_Kemm.indd 152 4/13/11 11:35 AM an aPPetite for Justice 153 If I were caught trespassing, I would remember that individual, and during campaign work on behalf of these individuals, whenever I spoke, he or she was in my mind at all times, keeping me focused on the importance of speaking for those whom we don’t hear. Animal investigations are emotionally draining. I felt helpless watching people in an auction hall in Petaluma poke and prod baby calves whose umbilical cords were still wet. I was horrified watching workers hang ducks upside down on the slaughter line, while some fell off in a desperate attempt to escape. I was deeply saddened by the haunting echoes of confined pregnant pigs banging their heads against bars of crates so narrow that they couldn’t turn around. I grew up in Texas—not exactly a place people think of when they imagine a plethora of vegan options. When I was a kid, I knew nothing about factory farming, or the environmental or social impacts of eating farmed animals, but I did see cows—lots of cows. When we traveled to and from Corpus Christi, I saw fields of cows. Even then I realized that if I ate one, I would destroy their family. Maybe I was sensitive to their families because of my parents’ divorce when I was just four. I hated the idea of families being separated; I had an intense desire not to hurt anybody’s family. Again, being young, I imagined what it was like for the cow’s family when a member went missing, and they didn’t know why, or where they had gone. The first poem I ever wrote was about ants, and how upset I was when people killed them. In my first writing, I was already speaking out for the (very) little critter! I have an old autograph book; friends remember me being a vegetarian in the fifth grade, but I don’t think I was exactly consistent. I became a vegetarian (as much as a kid can) after my mom explained to me where “chicken” came from. I decided right then and there that I didn’t want to eat anyone. No one else in my family is vegetarian, but I sometimes consider myself to be an extreme version of my mother. I remember her bringing home a little plastic deer and...

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