Talkin Pets

Universal Pictures, Media Rights Capital, Bluegrass Films, Smart Productions and Fuzzy Door Productions present a 106 minute, R rated, comedy, fantasy, directed by Seth MacFarlene, written by MacFarlene, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild with a theater release date of June 29, 2012.

It's hot, dark and foul inside a Matson Navigation shipping container, where 115 pigs are crammed in tight. Without even room to lie down, the pigs stand in their own waste, which pours out the bottom of the container whenever the ship hits rough water on the way from Oakland to Honolulu.

Up to 1 out of these 5 pigs transported from places like Montana, Iowa and South Dakota won't even survive their week-long journey to the slaughterhouse in Hawaii.

Leilani Farm Sanctuary is a nonprofit farm animal sanctuary in Maui that wants this cruelty to stop. The folks there started a petition on Change.org calling on Matson Navigation to join other shipping companies -- including its main competitor, Horizon Lines -- in committing to end its inhumane practice of live pig transport to Hawaii. Please sign Leilani Farm Sanctuary's petition to stop the live transport of pigs from the mainland to Hawaii now.

Thousands of pigs are transported in terrible conditions like this to Hawaii every year. Video obtained by the Handle With Care Coalition shows pigs being held in metal containers in the hot sun before they even get on a Matson ship in California -- already a violation of U.S. animal transport laws. Perhaps the worst part, though, is that none of this suffering and cruelty is necessary -- not when there are locally raised pigs and other more humane alternatives.

One Hawaii resident explained that he signed the Leilani Farm Sanctuary's petition because "it is not pono to inflict cruelty on these animals by subjecting them to shipping across the ocean." (Pono means "righteous" in Hawaiian and is a fundamental ideal in Hawaiian culture -- it's even in the state motto.) Neither local Hawaiians nor tourists want to be associated with this kind of severe animal cruelty.

Sign the Leilani Farm Sanctuary's petition calling on Matson Navigation to end the live transport of pigs to Hawaii now:

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-shipping-live-pigs-from-the-mainland-us-to-hawaii-for-slaughter

Thanks for being a change-maker,

- Stephanie and the Change.org team