ASHEVILLE, NC – On August 4 and 5 at LEAF Downtown in Asheville’s Pack Square, North Carolinians will get their first glimpse of #ThePigPicture when Farm Sanctuary, America’s leading farm animal protection organization, launches a new campaign called “Meet Your Neighbors” that aims to introduce North Carolina’s 10 million humans to the nearly 9 million pigs who live their short lives inside the state’s concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), where they are rarely if ever seen by the general public.
However, to residents of eastern North Carolina, which contains a dozen counties where pigs actually outnumber humans, the reality of factory farming is anything but hidden — the smell, the flies, and the foul brown water all seep through the land they call home.
“This isn’t only an animal rights issue, it’s a human rights issue, too,” says Farm Sanctuary President and Co-founder Gene Baur, who TIME magazine calls “the conscience of the food movement” and a member of Oprah Winfrey’s SuperSoul 100 dream team of “100 awakened leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.” “As a major pork-producing state, North Carolina has suffered the ills of factory farming, including environmental destruction, animal abuse and human health hazards. I stand with the people of North Carolina who are speaking out against this violent and unjust industry.”
Meet the Pigs
The first opportunity to “meet your neighbors”—and the first sign that pigs are about to get a whole lot more visible in North Carolina—will be on August 4 and 5 at LEAF Downtown in Asheville’s Pack Square, when a select group of local artists — Lena Greenstone , Jenny Joleen, Abbi Kay, Anissa Metheny, and Joseph Pearson — will gather to transform otherwise unadorned life-sized fiberglass pig statues into vibrant pieces of art as advocacy. The pigs will be painted live at the festival and will stand in front of participating business storefronts — Bean Vegan Cuisine, The Block Off Biltmore, Firestorm Cafe & Books, Plant, Sanctuary Brewing Company, and VeganAirBnB.com — in an effort to broaden public awareness of the impacts of factory farming on health, the environment, and social justice in the state and to help North Carolinians see #ThePigPicture. Learn more at farmsanctuary.org/neighbors!
