Virtual reality slaughter house coming to Exeter

Paul McCartney once famously said ‘If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarians’… but of course they don’t, and most people remain unaware of the lives and deaths of animals bred for food. But now all that is changing with Animal Equality becoming the first animal protection group in the world to transport people inside factory farms and slaughterhouses via virtual reality technology.

Exeter will be the first stop for the international organisation’s iAnimal project, a virtual reality experience filmed over the past 18 months inside pig farms in the UK, Germany and Italy as well as a slaughterhouse in Spain. In all of these countries, and most of the western world, the majority of pigs killed for meat are intensively reared inside barren, filthy factory farm sheds with breeding sows confined to tiny farrowing crates for weeks at a time when they give birth--a sight that moved Downton Abbey actor, Peter Egan to tears as he narrated the film. See his reaction:

Through the lenses of the virtual reality headset, viewers feel that they are inside the farm and slaughterhouse, trapped alongside all the other animals, and sharing their fate. You stand next to a mother pig while she gives birth for the sixth time to piglets who will soon be taken away from her. You experience the extreme confinement of the farrowing crates. You witness the daily suffering that takes place inside a pig farm. You are right there when they take their last breath.

Actor Peter Egan said: "I have never seen anything as shocking as this in my life. It’s devastating, and completely inhumane. Virtual reality enabled me to experience, close up, for just a few minutes, the horror of the short lives of factory farmed animals, to see what they see, to get a real sense of how they live. It has shocked me deeply, and it has strengthened my resolve to help them."

Toni Shephard, UK Executive Director of Animal Equality said: "Virtual reality opens up worlds that used to be hidden from us and there is nothing more secretive than the way animals are reared and killed for food. Animal Equality believes people have the right to know what happens in modern farms and slaughterhouses so that consumers can make informed decisions about the food they buy. Now, through our cutting-edge iAnimal project, we can open up these secretive worlds and allow everyone to experience first hand how farmed animals live - and die.’

Animal Equality will be bringing iAnimal to 20 university campuses across Britain this spring.