For Immediate Release:
April 7, 2023
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Scranton, Pa. – Succession star and PETA Honorary Director James Cromwell has a new love in his life: a piglet who fell off a truck as he was being taken to be fattened for slaughter. When Cromwell learned from PETA that the piglet, who was found scraped, bruised, and covered in mud, had been rescued just before the ham-heavy Easter holiday, he just had to meet him. And he did—virtually, this morning—and named him Babe in honor of the film that inspired him to go vegan 28 years ago. Soon, Cromwell will help transfer Babe to Indraloka Animal Sanctuary, where the piglet will be welcomed after receiving a clean bill of health.
“Having had the privilege of witnessing and experiencing pigs’ intelligence and inquisitive personalities while filming the movie Babe changed my life and my way of eating, and so I jumped at the chance to save this real-life Babe,” says Cromwell. “Every pig deserves to live in peace and joy at a sanctuary, choosing when to frolic, where to forage, and how to spend their time, yet few do.”
PETA points out that pigs are playful, intelligent, friendly animals who are soothed by music, love playing ball, sleep together in “pig piles,” and even enjoy getting massages. In the meat industry, which slaughters 129 million pigs every year, their tails are chopped off, their teeth are cut with pliers, and the males are castrated—all without painkillers. At the slaughterhouse, they’re hung upside down and bled to death.
Babe will join many pig pals as well as alpacas, chickens, cows, and others at the nearly 100-acre Indraloka Animal Sanctuary. Anyone interested in contributing to Babe’s lifetime care can support the sanctuary here.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
