27 animals die during Hobbit filming

[Bêthberry]

I'm no fan of PETA, having recently like Morth had some bbq'ed sea kittens (but mine were skinned so no problem with the hair), but in the CBC story which I posted, nothing is said about PETA.

That story relates to the concerns of the American Humane Association, which legitimately and legally oversees animal welfare in film productions. It by no means has an aggressive or radical history of concerns.

And it appears that its concerns are for the lack of oversight for the care (and training) of the animals off the set, which strikes me as a fair point to make. Note that the production company asked the AHA to investigate, it did, and the company made changes.

PETA jumps in and messes up the message.

[jallanite]

There was a television show these many years ago called Green Acres. One of the characters(?) in the show was a young pig named Arnold. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ziffel .

Since pigs grow quickly there must have been at least a different pig every year to play Arnold and, as the article I have cited says, mostly Arnold was really female. So what happened after each Arnold got too old?

A common story was that the cast had a yearly pig roast and ate Arnold. Since the roast was held after the season’s filming, it could still be claimed that no animal was harmed during the filming. The article cited claims this story was not true, but has the superscript warning “[citation needed]”.

Supposedly the pigs were returned to live out natural lives on farms. True or false?