A rescued pig adopted from a shelter ended up as a meal for the household that adopted her.
The pig was adopted from a location for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. The new owner signed a contract not to kill or eat the pig upon adoption. Despite that, the owner won’t face legal consequences, the CBC reported.
“To hear that somebody did this to an animal that we worked so hard to make sure was healthy, and tried to get into a good home, is absolutely heartbreaking,” said Leon Davis, Nanaimo SPCA branch manager, via CBC.
The owner decided to eat the pig just a few weeks after adoption. The pig had been rescued, along with dozens of other piglets, in a rescue operation in Duncan, British Columbia. Molly, the pig, was just one of that batch of animals that shelter staff managed to nurse back to health. She was a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, the CBC reported.
It’s not against the law to kill a pig, as long as it is done humanely, which investigators did determine to be the case. The owner killed and ate the pig after discovering a problem with it. The SPCA won’t let the owner adopt another animal, the CBC reported.
Brandee McKee, who owns a pig as a pet and lives on Vancouver Island, found out about the situation online. She told Global News that a couple sent photos out online through social media that showed them seasoning and preparing to eat Molly after turning her into pig meat.
“Because animals are considered property under the law, once an adoption agreement is made, that person is the full legal owner of that animal, whether it’s a dog, or a cat, or a pig or whatever so the minute the adoption is signed we lose all legal rights to that animal,” Lorie Chortyk, general manager of community relations for the British Columbia SPCA, via Global News.
Chortyk added that shelter staff had no way of knowing what the people in Molly’s new household were going to do. She said that owners go through an involved process before they can take an animal home, and expectations were spelled out clearly in writing, Global News reported.
“This gentleman, we’re certainly very devastated by what he did, but he didn’t do anything illegal,” said Chortyk, referring to the man who adopted Molly.
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