A litter of piglets is what’s for dinner after a pig farmer in the U.K., decided to show her thanks to the firemen who saved the pigs from a February barn fire.

The 18 piglets and two sows may have survived the Wiltshire fire, but they couldn’t survive the butcher’s block.

In a controversial move, The BBC reports farm manager Rachel Rivers thanked the Pewsey fire crew by giving them sausages made from the saved swine.

“I’m sure vegetarians will hate this,” Rivers tells The BBC.

However, the firefighters say the sausage was “fantastic.”

As can be expected, The BBC reports People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is not too pleased.

“We’ll be sending Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service packs of vegan sausages so that they can see how easy it is to truly be heroes for pigs — by sparing them all suffering,” PETA Mimi Bekhechi tell The BBC.

The BBC reports the pigs were afforded a six-month stay of execution after being rescued from the fire at Milton Lilbourne.

However the pigs were a consumer product being raised as food so the farm decided to pay thanks and delivered the pigs as sausages to the fire station team.

Rivers is defending the gift, saying farming is her livelihood and way of life. She also says that while the pigs were alive, they were the beneficiaries of ethical treatment.

“I gave those animals the best quality of life I could ever give until the time they go to slaughter, and they go into the food chain,” she tells The BBC.

Rivers continued, “You do feel sad at the end of it — but to bring them down for [the firefighters] was a good way of saying ‘thank you.’”

The farm’s owner, Canon Gerald Osbourne, tells The BBC, “An inevitable part of farming is the death of an animal which gives us the food to eat.”