The mystery surrounding three frozen pigs that were hung above various streets in Montréal, Canada, may have been solved as police continue their investigation.
The pig carcasses were all found hanging relatively close together on flyovers in the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie district on Thursday morning, local media reported. Police investigators initially said they had no motive for the action, nor evidence that it was a hateful act.
But on Friday, local French-language newspaper The Journal of Montreal reported that a spokesman claiming to represent international animal rights organization DxE (Direct Action Everywhere) said its members committed the crime.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock causes 14.5 percent of all global CO2 emissions every year. This roughly corresponds to the amount generated by all transports together.
The diary The article includes an image that appears to have been provided by DxE’s Montréal chapter. The photo shows one of the pigs hanging upside down from an overpass and a French sign that reads “Tu payes, ils meurent”. Translated, this means: “You pay, they die” – a slogan that the group has used before.
Early Thursday morning, Montréal police received a 911 call from a member of the public about the first carcass. Officers went to the location, reported CTV News Montreal, and arrived around 3:30 a.m. They discovered two more frozen pigs hanging from separate flyovers within the next two hours. Afterwards, Stadtwerke employees removed the hanging carcasses.
The DxE person, who identified himself only as Nathe, said the motive behind the action was to protest meat consumption.
“It is truly an action by the prosecution against animal cruelty. We want it to send a clear message that when people pay to kill animals, there is a lot of unnecessary suffering that we can avoid,” Nathe said diary.
DxE says its mission is to achieve revolutionary social and political change for animals in one generation.
“We reject speciesism, which drives the mass torture and killing of non-human animals and the blatant disregard for their homeland — our planet — and the unjust and oppressive institutions and ideologies that harm all animals, including humans,” the group said in a mission statement .
In September 2022, said Dave Dinesen, CEO of an agricultural technology company news week that “changing human diets on a global scale is unlikely; a more realistic and effective approach is to change how the animals that produce the world’s food are fed.”
The Montreal police announced the incident on Thursday news week: “The investigation into this case is still ongoing. With rare exceptions, the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal never comments on ongoing investigations so as not to jeopardize their progress.”
news week asked the DxE for comment.
