Most of the time when you see an animal rescue incident, the follow up story involves cute pictures of the saviour and the animal looking like best buddies.

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However, this story didn’t quite turn out like that as the firefighters who rescued a bunch of piglets ended up actually eating them. Savage.

A litter of 18 piglets and two sows were saved from a fire in Wiltshire in February after 60 tonnes of hay caught fire.

In what many people consider to be a controversial move, farmer Rachel Rivers decided to thank the Pewsey fire team by serving them up sausages that were made from the pigs they had saved.

Initially they were overjoyed and said that the bangers were “fantastic”, but they have since had to apologise after a series of complaints including one from PETA who said that the piglets were “no better off” for escaping the fire. Spokesman Mimi Bekhechi said:

We’ll be sending Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service packs of vegan sausages so that they can see how easy it is to truly be heroes for pigs – by sparing them all suffering.

The farm’s owner, Canon Gerald Osbourne, countered this argument by saying:

An inevitable part of farming is the death of an animal which gives us the food to eat.

Most meat-eaters are going to agree with Osbourne’s statement, but it does still seem like a rather cruel and gruesome way to thank the firefighters. If you have to eat meat then the last thing you want to do is be reminded that it used to be a cute little animal – I can’t imagine finding sausages made from the babies I had rescued to be all that appetising. But I guess that’s just me and the fire team certainly seemed to enjoy them.

Maybe farmers won’t be so quick to slaughter their animals once they’re replaced with these half human/half pig hybrids.