pig blood in the streets of Koscierzyna

The coincidence of finding the same kind of story in two completely different parts of the world on the same day seems uncanny. Or is it far more common than we care to know? On the same day, I found two news stories surface, one about a river of pig blood coming from a slaughterhouse in a small town in Poland called Koscierzyna and the other, about pig blood flowing down a river in Dallas, TX.

In both of these stories, the reaction by the witnesses was the same: horror and outrage over the slaughterhouse for polluting their waterways with fresh blood. In both cases, the power of witnessing the horror of what we are doing to animals surpassed even the power of denial that allows us to eat these same animals without thinking about it. Our denial remains unexamined as long as the suffering takes place behind closed doors and remains invisible and silent to us. But once the horror is revealed before our very eyes, we feel compelled to react to it.

The meat and dairy industries know just how powerful the act of witnessing is, that is, the power that witnessing has in transforming our apathy for animals into empathy. So they’ve gone to great lengths to keep their facilities as clandestine as possible. Slaughterhouses are now designated as “biosecurity zones,” off limits to all but slaughterhouse personnel.

Both of these stories demonstrate the power of witnessing as the first critical step to facing the truth about the atrocities committed to animals that occur daily around the world to 60 billion animas a year. Once we have become witnesses, there’s no turning back. We begin to see a river of blood in our minds that has polluted our thoughts and conditioned us to ignore animal suffering. And the healing process for ourselves and the animals can now begin.