Washington family devastated after butchers mistakenly kill pet pigs

Two pet pigs in Washington state were killed after a mobile butchering business went to the wrong address.

A family in Washington state has been left devastated after a mobile butcher confused their home with a different address and slaughtered their pet pigs.

Betty and Patty, both two years old, were shot in their pen in Port Orchard while the family was away from home.

Owner Nathan Gray said he could not contain his anger. "They were my wife's pets and my kids' and they, you know, they're family."

Police told the BBC that the matter had been passed to the prosecutor's office.

Mr Gray and his wife Natalie said they returned home on 1 May to find their pets in the process of being butchered. Their home CCTV system had alerted them to an unknown vehicle on their property.

Mr Gray said that after arriving, one of his employees approached him and said: "These guys shot your pigs."

He said he found Patty and Betty laying in pools of blood. "They shot them. Only 16 feet from our neighbour's fence."

He said he confronted the butcher, who said his GPS "screwed up". "They asked me what I wanted to do with the with the pigs - whether I wanted them to be processed.

"They'll be buried on this property, like the rest of our animals."

Mrs Gray said that her children had been traumatised. "They were my babies," she said of Betty and Patty. "And when you have kids and they don't feel safe - when they feel violated, I feel mad that they don't feel safe."

The pigs enjoyed chasing their daughters and playing in the mud and were expected to live their entire lives at their Gray Acres farm, the couple said.

The Grays now want to ensure that this never happens again, and hope to change the laws that regulate mobile butchering.

"It seems like there's no guidelines. What I've read - there's nothing about firearm training," said Mr Gray. He added that he would find it incredible if it was legal to walk onto private property with a gun and kill an animal without the owner's permission.

A lawyer for the couple, Adam Karp, told BBC News that "the law treats Betty and Patty no differently than if were they Golden Retrievers or Norwegian Forest Cats".

Despite being legally classified as "livestock", he said that it is a serious crime to intentionally cause injury to any animal without legal justification, and that the butcher may be civilly liable for the offence of theft of livestock.

He added that he has been hired by the couple "to explore criminal, civil, and regulatory avenues to do justice for Betty and Patty and to ensure no horror like this ever happens again".

Mobile slaughter units were created in the US in 2002. Each is accompanied by an official food safety inspector. They are intended to allow farmers and ranchers to have their animals butchered without being forced to travel long distances to access larger facilities.