ACTIVISTS wearing grim pig masks scared shoppers and children outside a top UK supermarket chain.
Protestors from a group staged the protest too call on Tesco chiefs in the UK to stop selling meat from a local pig farm.
But onlookers said the ugly masks, which were smeared with fake blood, frightened young children.
Viva was calling on the Tesco store in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in the UK, to blacklist the local Hogwood Farm in nearby Oxhill.
They targeted the supermarket after images appeared in the national press in the UK alleging pigs were kept in poor conditions at the farm.
The images were supplied to the media by Viva after it filmed the farm secretly.
But their presence outside the supermarket was upsetting too some shoppers.
One said: “Some little children didn’t seem to understand what was happening.
“Because the masks were covered in blood it looked frightening to them.
“Can’t the get their point across without trying to shock and scare all the time?”
A representative from the farm said: “What we’ve got here is a well established business that is audited on a regular basis that complies with all animal welfare standards.
“We’ve got references here from the veterinary surgeon who’s been coming here for over 10 years.
“She was here two weeks previously before the incursion by Viva.
“We are currently reviewing our practices particularly in and around access to what is a livestock controlled environment.”
