When vegan campaigner Pamela Nova visited an abattoir she claimed she could hear the pigs 'scream'.
She was at the time protesting against the slaughter of animals in an action known as an ‘animal save’.
The Animal Save Movement began in Canada with a mission to "spread the idea that we all have a moral duty to bear witness, end animal agriculture and reforest the Earth."
READ MORE: Veganuary: Bristol's best vegan and vegetarian restaurants
They visit slaughterhouses and capture photos and footage of the animals queueing up to be killed.
They post their footage on social media with an aim to raise awareness of the reality behind the food that ends up on our plates.
Although Pamela is supportive of the work they do, for the last few years she has been working on setting up her own groups and individual campaigns, believing in the importance of reaching people in different ways.
Follow the latest updates on this story and others like it here
She thinks that telling a story around Peppa Pig is an effective and memorable way of raising awareness in regards to the suffering inflicted on animals as a result of the meat industry.
It began with a chalk drawing outside her home in Eastville with the words ‘sorry Peppa Pig, you’re going to get killed’.
She decided to download photos of Peppa Pig and use the popular children's cartoon as a way of raising awareness about the reality of life for pigs.
“It’s interesting how in children’s stories about animals they are all cute and lovely when the reality of a pig’s life is one of mutilation," said Pamela.
“Peppa Pig is one part of the propaganda of the dominant culture."
In her story, Peppa Pig is going on an outing and Pamela asks the audience to guess where they think she might be going.
The light and fluffy children's tale turns a dark corner when we discover that Peppa is not going to a birthday party or a funfair but she is going to a place called Tulip, a slaughterhouse just outside Bristol.
Tulip decline the opportunity to comment on Ms Nova's campaign. The abattoir has previously said publicly that "the welfare of animals is always of the highest importance to us".
'Mind-boggling' realisation
After researching the reality of the life and death of farm animals eight years ago Pamela, who was already a vegetarian and an environmental campaigner, felt turning vegan was something she had to do, not as a simple dietary choice but as an ethical position that she would encourage others to get on board with.
“I was living in Penang in Malaysia and my yoga teacher said she had gone plant-based," adds Pamela.
"That triggered something in me and I started going online looking at all sorts of stuff that I found quite horrific.
“It was mind-boggling because I thought I was a well informed person, I had been a climate activist for years.
Get the best stories about the things you love most curated by us and delivered to your inbox every day. Choose what you love here
“After immersing myself in that for a couple of weeks, I thought I just have to do it - I chucked all the dairy out of the fridge and after a year I moved into advocacy because that’s just the sort of person I am, you just have to get out there and do stuff to make a difference.”
While some people struggle with a vegan diet due to a lack of awareness as to how to adequately substitute meat and dairy, for Pamela her struggle came from frustration with others who were not so easily persuaded to make the changes she had made.
“People always argue with you because veganism is a whole ethical position, it’s not a diet," says Pamela.
“People don’t always like it when I tell them that we are also animals and that there is no physiological need for humans to consume the bodies and secretions of other animals.
“My cats really helped me to understand the difference in the personality of different animals.
“When I first had cats I thought the only thing that was different about them was the colour of their fur and their gender.
“But they all have incredibly different personalities and it’s the same with the so-called food animals, the ones that we torture, mutilate, chop up and eat.
“The difficulty comes in a social sense because you think it’s so obvious, my friends and family are nice, decent, good people and they want to be healthy so if I talk to them about this then they will want to be vegan, but it never happens that way.
“There is an ongoing challenge and frustration with people all the time.
“As a long term Climate Change campaigner, I was involved in XR [Extinction Rebellion], I thought it would be easy to start veganising with them.
“Some of them were vegan but most of them weren’t and they had the usual attitude of, ‘stop being so veganising’, which was disappointing.”
'Capitalistic, consumerist' Veganuary
Over the lockdown Pamela moved her activism on to YouTube and started her own channel called Animal Justice Emergency. Now that everything has opened up she will be taking her Peppa Pig story and images from Tulip along to vegan pop-up cafes she will be starting later this month.
She wants to use the pop-up cafes as a way of reaching out to people in local communities, by creating a space for free vegan food combined with educational material on the suffering animals endure as a result of our dietary choices.
She hopes to bring vegans and non-vegans together for a free vegan community meal.
Although Bristol was crowned the vegan capital of the world in 2019, Pamela is concerned with the way veganism as well as movements like the recent ‘Veganuary’ have become about health and consumer choice rather than raising the profile of animal rights.
Although Pamela still broadly supports the Veganuary concept, she believes that it has become “a very capitalistic, neoliberal movement that’s just about consuming and doesn’t have the ethical dimension that animals are beings".
She said: “It’s good that it raises the profile of veganism but challenging if you want to put the more radical message across that we are all animals and we shouldn’t hurt or abuse other animals.
“People think it’s going to be a simple dietary change and you can try it out for a month and see what will happen, like a smoker or problem drinker, you will probably give up after a month because you are just trying it.
“You have to be clear about your motivations, watch slaughterhouse videos and plan ahead, be clear about why you want to do it.
“We are all vegan fundamentally and it’s only the propaganda of the dominant culture that tells us anything different.”
Pamela hopes that through her pop up cafes she will be able to give advice and support to people who may have tried Veganuary and are thinking about going vegan permanently.
Vegan pop-up cafes are scheduled to take place at: St Annes Church, 12pm-2pm, February 20 and Eastville Park, Nissan Hut, 12pm-2pm, March 13.
To find out more about Pamela's campaigns and to book a place at the upcoming pop-up Cafes please see her Facebook page here.
What do you think? Sign in and join the conversations in the comments below
