A team of firefighters who rescued 18 piglets and two sows from a fire in the United Kingdom earlier this year met their rescues again—this time as sausages.
According to the BBC, the firefighters rushed to a farm in Wiltshire (located in Southwest England) and saved the group of pigs from the blaze of a massive hay fire in February. However, shortly after the piglets grew to market size, they were slaughtered and turned into sausages.
In a somewhat bizarre series of events, Rachel Rivers, the farm manager, thanked the firefighters by gifting them the sausage made from the piglets. That’s definitely a unique spin on giving a gift basket.
To be fair, Rivers said that the pigs were inevitably going to be slaughtered and made into someone’s food. It just so happens that these little piggies came out of the fire and into the frying pan (or barbecue) at the Pewsey fire station.
“I gave those animals the best quality of life I could ever give, until the time they go to slaughter and they go into the food chain,” Rivers told the BBC, explaining her decision for her strange gift.
However, some people were not so comfortable with it. Some have even taken it upon themselves to chastise both Rivers and the firefighters — including people at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who said they plan to send a more pig-friendly gift of their own.
“We’ll be sending Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service packs of vegan sausages so that they can see how easy it is to truly be heroes for pigs — by sparing them all suffering,” PETA Director of International Program Mimi Bekhechi told the BBC.
The Guardian also reported that the firefighters, who first posted about the sausages on Facebook calling them “fantastic,” removed the posts of their impromptu sausage BBQ after receiving some backlash over the story.