If you are awake during your morning commute you most likely see some fairly routine things. The same group of kids waiting at the bus stop, your neighbor scurrying out to the street to gather the morning paper, or unfortunately the same long line at that pesky place where the traffic always backs up.
For me, it’s the long, silver semi-tractor trailer trucks covered with air vents. The piggy transporters as I like to call them. I pass by an entrance to the turnpike and almost every day I see these trucks traveling between the turnpike and one of several local meat processing plants. Because the trucks are ventilated, it is easy to see inside and check out the cargo – porky pigs on their way to the destiny for which they have been raised. I often think, “Oh, those poor piggys, they have no idea where they’re going or what is about to happen.”
Now I am not an animal rights activist. I’m not a vegetarian. I like a good pork roast as much as the next meat eater. I enjoy the annual tradition of a Pennsylvania Dutch pork and sauerkraut dinner every New Year’s Day. And summer wouldn’t be complete without a few pineapple, mushroom and pork satay kabobs charcoaled on the grill. But one morning, I called into question my thinking about eating pork when I pulled to a stop next to one of these silver chariots of death.
I looked into the transporter and amid the curves of pink butts, snouts and ears was a very distinct and piercing eye. It was a blue eye, not at all like the more common brown or black eyes I was used to seeing. The most disturbing thing, however, was that it appeared so human-like. That pig, with his piercing blue eye, seemed to lock his gaze with mine, as if he somehow knew of his fate, and was pleading for his very life. 
The light turned, I pulled away and the pig I’m sure was delivered to his doom. But I can still see that pig’s eye and it makes we wonder, where was his Charlotte?
If I was born a generation or two earlier I probably wouldn’t think twice about this. Folks back then were more closely linked to their food supply. They raised it, harvested it, and butchered it. It was part of life. But today, the division of labor in providing basic necessities is shared so that most of us don’t participate in the procurement of our food. It is all neatly packaged and delivered to the grocery store and available for our shopping convenience. We don’t think about where it came from or how it got there.
I’m thankful that I have an abundance of options easily provided for me. Farming is hard work. Butchering is not my cup of tea. (Never tried it – never will). But I wonder about the thousands of animals that are raised solely to end up on our tables. A single animal butchered by a farmer to feed his family doesn’t bother me, but a truck load of them, slaughtered in assembly line fashion, makes me pause and think…there was just something about that blue eye.