To the editor:

To whom it may concern, (which this should be concerning to any compassionate person) …

This letter is urgent and I am asking for the help of any official to help shut down and stop the building of a slaughterhouse in a nearby town! This is directed to the Town of Westport, Massachusetts, and the slaughterhouse being built so close to home.

The Town of Westport should highly consider changing the town name to “Town Of Animal Cruelty & Horror.” As I live close by to this town, I was outraged to learn that this town has allowed a meatpacking company to build a slaughterhouse close to many homes. Construction has already begun and Westport needs to cancel all plans allowing the building of the slaughterhouse to continue now!

It’s already hard enough to concentrate on anything but animal cruelty when thinking of Westport since the Westport farm animal cruelty incidents. Now we’ll be facing the stench and screams of innocent animals in agony every time we walk through the neighborhoods of this town. Living, breathing animals will come into the heart of this town and never make it out alive. It will mean that the animals’ organs, hides, and hooves will be transported from this town in trucks, potentially spilling blood, guts and fecal matter onto the streets of your neighborhoods.

Slaughterhouses are not only cruel to animals, but to humans, too. Workers are subject to intense psychological trauma and severe physical injuries.

This town was so against animal cruelty when finding out about the local farm abusing animals, and it seemed like they had compassion for these living beings. But opening a slaughterhouse in the town is a blatant violation of the town’s core commitment against animal cruelty which they spoke so highly of when the farm incidents occurred only one year ago.

I have spoken with hundreds of residents who have signed the petition and some will be considering moving to another town if this slaughterhouse is built.  Incoming residents are changing their decision to live in an area where this is taking place. There is no room for cruelty in Westport - in fact, no towns anywhere should allow an industry that is so violent to animals, harmful to the environment, and dangerous to humans.

If you care about the residents of this town and want this harmful construction to stop, please help me encourage Town of Westport to immediately cancel all plans for building a slaughterhouse of horrors in town.

If this building is allowed, I urge that they construct the building with glass walls so that everyone will be able to see what goes on in there.

Leanne Manning

Fairhaven