An animal rights activist testified Monday that she ``was just following the golden rule'' when she gave pigs en route to slaughter a drink of water on a hot day last year.
Anita Krajnc, an activist with the group Toronto Pig Save, has pleaded not guilty to a mischief charge in the June 2015 incident, when she poured water through the portholes of a truck carrying the pigs.
Krajnc told a packed courtroom in Burlington, Ont., that she felt she was treating the pigs as they would want to be treated.
More than 150 people squeezed into the room to hear her testimony, some sitting on the floor.
Krajnc told court that she has spent hundreds of hours ``bearing witness'' to animals as they are transported to slaughter, and was sometimes accompanied by police who were keeping a watchful eye.
She said that before her arrest, police had never told her it was illegal to feed the pigs.