A Japanese YouTuber recently sparked controversy after apparently cooking and eating a piglet that he had raised on camera for the previous 100 days.

In May of this year, a Japanese man started a peculiar YouTube channel named “Eating Pig After 100 Days“. True to its name, the channel was all about raising a small piglet for 100 days, before cooking and eating it. The idea was intriguing enough to attract a decent audience of over 100,000 on the world’s most popular video platform, but few of its followers actually believed the man behind the project would actually go through with it. After all, what kind of monster would slaughter and eat the adorable piglet that won the hearts of so many, right? Well…

Over the last three and a half months, the owner of “Eating Pig After 100 Days” posted dozens of videos of himself treating the cute piglet as a pet, playing with it, washing it, feeding it, and even letting it sleep in his arms. The catchy jingle playing in the background made it that much harder to believe that anyone could actually kill and eat the animal after 100 days.

And yet, when the original deadline was reached, subscribers to “Eating Pig After 100 Days” were treated to a shocking a disturbing new video. The happy jingle was replaced with a piece of sad piano music, and the video showed the owner taking the piglet to presumably be put down, as he is then seen returning with a cardboard box containing the animal’s carcass.

To make matters worse, the man is then seen preparing the meat, before roasting it on an outdoor grill, and finally eating it. He can then be seen lighting a candle in the piglet’s metal cage, in memory of it, and showing clips of it as an adorable bundle of joy. It goes without saying that that only angered viewers even more.

After the controversial video, “Eating Pig After 100 Days” followers were enraged, showering the owner of the channel with negative comments, accusing him of animal cruelty, and asking authorities to take action against him. He did have some support from people who pointed out that people kill and eat pigs all the time, and that the accused only went through with his original plan, but such supporters were in the minority.

As if this story wasn’t bizarre enough, a day after the controversial video, which got over 3.4 million views on YouTube, the channel owner posted another one showing that the piglet was actually alive and well. Apparently, he had staged the whole thing to make people think more about the fate of animals we casually use as food. Still, the controversy didn’t end there…

There were still a few people who accused the anonymous owner of “Eating Pig After 100 Days” of replacing the piglet with another one following the backlash, as a way to save face. I for one can’t tell for sure, but his fans seem confident that their favorite piglet is still alive. Even if that were the case, a number of people have blasted the video creator for their “unscrupulous” way of attracting attention.

The idea of raising animals as pets and getting attached to them, before killing and eating them is actually part of the curriculum at some schools. It is used as a painful way of teaching students the value of the food they eat. It’s called the “Class of Life“.