"There's a schizoid quality to our relationship with animals, in which sentiment and brutality exist side by side. Half of the dogs in America will receive Christmas presents this year, yet few of us pause to consider the miserable life of the pig an animal as easily as intelligent as a dog that becomes the Christmas ham." - Michael Poll, New York Times.

As children, we all love animals, but as we age society dictates which animals we can continue to see as worthy of our compassion and which will become food, yet each has the same capacity for pain. It is just how we view them that differs.

(The turkey in the painting is alive and thriving. Unlike the other tens of millions of her kind that were killed in the US last year, she was spared - rescued from a ‘dead’ pile and allowed to live out her remaining years at a farm sanctuary.)

Last year in Canada 300,000 veal calves were killed. Calves are a by-product of the dairy industry. These animals, who would otherwise be viewed as profit-eaters become profit-makers by being processed into veal.

Veal calves spend their lives alone, chained at the neck and deprived of all iron to a state of anemia to ensure their flesh remains pink. They are typically slaughtered as babies between 14 to 16 weeks of age, but may even be sent through an auction the same day they are born.

This painting, along with the one below were done in an attempt to cope with two practices I'd just investigated in Canada - the slaughter of horses and the practice of "tusk trimming" (more adequately termed "tooth breaking") in cull boars (male breeding pigs).

Tooth breaking is done twice a year for all boars and immediately before transport. The goal is to remove the tusks for the handlers' safety as well as to skirt the transport legislation that requires all boars be transported divided to avoid the natural fighting that would ensue. Haulers, however, cannot fit as many animals on one trailer if this legislation is followed so rather than altering the trailer and reducing profits, they "alter" the boars by "boar bashing" - breaking their noses with crowbars and baseball bats to cause enough pain to prevent them from fighting; and by "tusk cutting" - breaking their teeth through the use of boltcutters which shatter the tooth (which is simply an elongated incisor like ours) and cutting directly through the innervated pulp canal. The pain is so severe that the boars can then be loaded with up to 20 other boars and 175 sows without fear of fighting.

I began investigating horse slaughter in Canada completely by chance. I investigated a plant in Quebec over the course of 2 months; and a plant in Saskatchewan over the course of 8 months. What I saw at these plants sickened me and could only be described as a complete betrayal to these horses. The vast majority of the horses had once been loved, had experienced a cooperative relationship with humans and yet, once injured or no longer of interest to the owners, were simply sold to the meat man, loaded on double-decker trailers and shipped to their demise. These horses, still unable to see humans as anything but a friend, would rush the kill pens if a slaughtehouse worker would pass (even if he was covered with blood and soon to be killing them) seeking out comfort. Many came in with their own halters and all shook so severely in the kill box that they were unable to remain standing.

The foal above was discovered in a horse slaughterhouse's rendering pit in Saskatchewan. His life had began where others ended. Seeing his tiny body in amongst the thousands of decapitated, processed and earless horse heads, limbs and internal organs was likely the most dirturbing moment of my life. It was soon to be followed by the sickening realization that his ears too, had been cut from his head. More frightening still - he had bruising in the shape of tire tracks on his face (bruising cannot occur unless the heart is beating).

This tiny foal was likely born alive, had his face run over by a small tractor or similar vehicle, and had his ears cut from his head. He did not have a hole in his head from a captive bolt pistol or gun so it's unclear how he died but it is clear that his - and his mother's - suffering must've been enormous.

His mother, likely a horse from the Colorado area was likely loaded and transport too close to term. Frightened, having been without feed and water for likely over 20 hours, struggling to remain standing on the trailer as falling meant certain death for her foal from trampling, she likely arrived at the slaughter plant completed exhausted and frightened. This terror and exhaustion may have caused her contractions to begin, birthing the foal. Her death most certainly followed his as she was quickly pushed through the slaughter line, never to know a moment with her newborn.

Seeing these horrific practices made me question "How far would we go?"; where would we draw our line on what is livestock vs what is sacred? Would mythical creatures such as pegasus and unicorns be farmed, transported and slaughtered if they were available? What about an animal that is part human? Would it still be seen as an animal we could eat? Certainly the great apes are seen as such and they are much more genetically human than a centaur could ever be. After witnessing these 2 practices, I have no reason to believe we would not farm these animals if we could - a truly disturbing thought.

In my experience, pigs are the worst treated of all farm animals. It is as though they are singled out for abuse.

If they have the misfortune of being a sow they will not know one moment of kindness their whole life through. Sows (breeding female pigs), are confined to barren metal crates only slightly larger than themselves for their entire adult lives. They develop crippling arthritis, are prone to fractures and often become lame. The vast majority, have pneumonia from living atop and breathing in their own waste and the waste of up to 5,000 other sows. They are driven mad by the incessant boredom, the constant craving for food and the continually thwarted natural instinct to build a nest for their soon-to-arrive piglets. She will have only 2 weeks with her babies (during which time she remains in a crate although somewhat larger), who will then be ripped away from her (I've seen sows punched in the face to remove them). She will be re-inseminated, then put back into a crate for the duration of her pregnancy.

By the time these sows are culled they are so worn out, beaten up and decimated they can barely walk. Because they are seen as so worthless they are often discarded on dead piles, killed in inhumane ways or abused with unspeakable acts.

No other animal seems to be made to suffer as pigs do.

Last year in Canada 300,000 veal calves were killed. Taken from their mothers at 1 to 2 days of age, they spent their lives in one of two ways dependent on whether they were to become 'red veal' or 'white veal'.

Red veal calves live outside, chained to a plastic igloo deprived of all contact, potentially able to see the other calves but unable to touch them. White veal calves live inside, alone, in the dark, chained at the neck and deprived of all iron to a state of anemia to ensure their flesh remains white and tender.

This painting depicts what I see as our macabre concern with animals after they've been processed into something 'useful' like leather furniture and how we take pains to ensure the safety of it, while at the same time disregarding even basic welfare for those same animals while alive.

Beef cattle are routinely castrated and dehorned without any anesthetic or analgesic. In Canada, they can be transported up to 57 hours without food, water or a rest. Upon arrival at the slaughterhouse, they may be electrically prodded and will be shot in the head with a captive bold gun to stun them (although as many as 5-10% will not be done so effectively enough to render unconscious).

They will have their throats slashed and bleed out. Hopefully the processing line will be slow enough to allow the cow time to die before it enters the hock cutting line, although some are not and literally die 'piece by piece', as one slaughterhouse worker told The Washington Post.

Julia was spared her gruesome fate, rescued by kind people and living her life out happily at a sanctuary, but most chickens are not this lucky.

My investigations of chickens in Canada and the US have been incredibly sad. You cannot help but feel impotent when faced with a trailer load of 5,000-7,000 chickens, overloaded, trapped and often deformed because of breeding that has forced them to develop chests too large to be supported by their feet, which atrophy until they are unable to walk.

Broiler chickens ("roasting chickens") are babies when sent to slaughter - they are still blue-eyed and peeping. When they arrive at the slaughterplant they are often left in the open sun for hours. Whenever I've inspected them they appear close to death, often with as many as 2-3 per individual crate already dead (5-7 birds are stuffed into each crate).

The crates are tossed and thrown without regard to the fragile birds within it. They are pulled out by their feet and hung upside down. Their heads are dragged through a "stun bath" - an electrified water bath which recent research has uncovered merely immobilizes the birds and makes their feathers easier to pull but does nothing to stun them. Fully conscious, their throats are slit and they are bled out. They are processed at such incredible speeds it is not possible that they are all unconscious by the time their feet are cut off and their butchering begins. These birds have a miserable, painful, short life and a brutal, unfathomably painful end.

This is a simple painting to remind us what Wilbur's fate is - to contrast between how we are allowed to see farm animals as children, vs the adult vision we have of them (as cuts of meat). It reminds us that when we eat pork we are eating an animal as worthy, intelligent and loving as Wilbur was.

Please note that if you still eat pork there are varying levels of cruelty according to the product it is produced into. Pepperoni, bologna, sausages and sausage patties are the most cruel: made from culled sows (breeding female pigs who've been confined to a crate their entire lives) and culled boars (who lived their lives equally confined and had their teeth broken at least twice a year). With pork loin, ham and pork roasts - look for dark red, tough patches in the meat. These are called "blood splash" and are the result of being hot hit with electric prods. The electric prod causes deep tissue damage which appears as these patches we're all familiar with. It means the pig was likely loaded and unloaded roughly with electric proddings severe enough to cause damage many layers down.

This downer cull 'dairy' cow was discovered in a livestock auction in Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, downed cull dairy cows are a common sight at auctions - used up and calcium depleted to the point where their bones fracture these girls are so health-compromised many do not survive the trip to slaughter. Those that do but go down are pulled or forced off the trailers in unimaginable ways.

As with pork, there is an increasing level of cruelty with beef products that is inversely proportional to the cost of the meat. Hamburger, especially hamburgers from fast food restaurants, come exclusively from these broken-down, suffering cows. If there was no market for hamburger, these injured and ailing cows could be put down on-farm rather than loaded, transported and dragged through the auction, collecting station and slaughterhouse system.

Ginette was one of two survivors of a terrible trailer accident in Quebec. The driver had been lazy and failed to insert the dividers between the cages (a routine problem in Quebec). When he stopped too abruptly the cages flew forward, opening and spilling chickens onto the busy roadway.

At least 10 birds died this way. Three birds desperately clung to the cage below them. One of these birds later died. We managed to rescue the two survivors, Ginette and Denis who were brought to a sanctuary where they are now happily living out their lives.

Transportation systems were never designed with poultry in mind. If injured, dying or ill there is no way to remove them from the trailer, which holds up to 5,000-7,000 birds. There is no way to ensure the welfare of each bird, yet they experience pain as any other animal does.

This llama and very ill horse were found in a livestock auction in Ontario. We were visiting the day after the sale and shocked to see that many of the animals had still not been provided with any water. We quickly pulled together some buckets and provided hay. The horse drank 2 of these buckets of water without pausing.

Many of the cattle similarly had not had any water so we frantically ran around trying to ensure everyone got some. This problem is the direct result of Ontario's animal welfare regulations lacking clear direction on providing water at sales. Without a regulation, unfortunately auctions just cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the animals.

Billy was a cull boar we discovered freezing in an exposed, outdoor pen at an auction in Missouri. He had what we suspected to be a fractured left hind leg. Although Billy was an intact, adult boar he was the most gentle pig I've ever met.

Billy quietly accepted us - fussing over him with a blanket and heating pad, feeding him cheerios, apples and yogurt by hand. We so badly wanted to rescue Billy, but it wasn't possible with his injury. We tried to reason with the auction workers to at least put him out of his misery and shoot him. We soon realized it would all be for naught when we were told it was the auction veterinarian that had bought him, left him like this and was taking him to the local butcher tomorrow.

We stayed with Billy nearly all night but were eventually forced to leave. When we returned the next morning, we were not allowed on the premises but we discovered that Billy was no longer there and the rendering plant had not been called to pick up his body. It's most likely that Billy suffered through the night, freezing and in pain with his broken leg, only to be brought to slaughter the next day.

I still have Billy's picture up in my office. He's my reminder of how animals return what they sense from us, that they appreciate kindness as all of us do and that we must fight for them harder than we ever have before.