Farms: Spanish farm workers avoid jail despite barbaric video showing them beating pregnant pigs with metal
Productivity | Information | History | View | Quality
The trial came after barbaric footage emerged showing the men laughing as they tortured pregnant pigs and hit the animals over the head with iron bars before digging dirty metal swords into their sides repeatedly before ripping piglets from their wombs. One of the men plays up to the camera as a pig writhes squealing and dying in front of them after he stabs it repeatedly along with a colleague. He flexes his biceps as he stands over the animal after killing it in the most savage way possible while a colleague jokes out loud: 'Rest in peace.' The piglets inside the sows were pulled out of their mothers' stomachs alive after they were slaughtered. The shocking images were filmed at El Escobar farm in Fuente Alamo, Murcia, south east Spain and published by a worker shocked by what he saw. They led to the arrests of the four men who went on trial today. However, only two turned up at the court with one believed to be on the run. And speaking after the verdict, prosecutors from animal welfare organisation Animal Equality said they would appeal to try to ensure the men did prison time. Its international Director Javier Moreno said: 'Plunging an 80 centimetre sword 50 times into a pig cannot go unpunished.' While Miguel Rodriguez, a veterinary hospital anaesthetist, has described the footage as the worst he has ever seen. He said: 'It's the most horrible case of animal mistreatment I've seen in my career. 'The suffering these animals have endured is comparable to the pain we'd suffer as humans in that situation.' While Javier Moreno, international director of animal welfare organisation Animal Equality, which is also prosecuting the defendants as well as the Spanish state, added: 'This is without doubt the cruelest thing we've ever seen. 'We want a historic and exemplary sentence.' The organisation has launched a petition which has already been signed by more than 66,000 people calling for a change in the law to stiffen the penalties for animal mistreatment.