Animal–industrial complex
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Animal–industrial complex (AIC) is a concept used by activists and scholars to describe what they contend is the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of
Killing more than 200 billion land and aquatic animals every year, the AIC has been implicated in climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and the Holocene extinction. It is also responsible for spreading of diseases from animals to humans, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Definitions
The expression animal–industrial complex was coined by the Dutch cultural anthropologist and philosopher Barbara Noske in her 1989 book Humans and Other Animals, saying that animals "have become reduced to mere appendages of computers and machines."[1]: 299 [3]: 20 The expression relates the practices, organizations, and overall industry that turns animals into food and other commodities to the military–industrial complex.[1]: xii, 298
Richard Twine later refined the concept, regarding it as the "partly opaque and multiple set of networks and relationships between the corporate (agricultural) sector, governments, and public and private science. With economic, cultural, social and affective dimensions it encompasses an extensive range of practices, technologies, images, identities and markets."[4]: 23 Twine also discusses the overlap between the AIC and other industrial complexes, such as the prison–industrial complex, entertainment–industrial complex, and pharmaceutical–industrial complex.[4]: 17–18 Sociologist David Nibert defines the animal–industrial complex as "a massive network that includes grain producers, ranching operations, slaughterhouse and packaging firms, fast food and chain restaurants, and the state," which he claims "has deep roots in world history."[2]: 197
The AIC essentially refers to the triple helix of influential, powerful systems that control knowledge systems about meat production, namely, the government, the corporate sphere, and the academy.[5]
Origin and properties
Although the origin of the animal–industrial complex can be traced back to the time when
According to Stallwood, the animal–industrial complex breeds animals in the billions in order to make products and services for human consumption, and all these animals are considered legal property of the animal–industrial complex. The animal–industrial complex is said to have transformed the already confused relationship between human and non-human animals, significantly increasing the consumption and threatening human survival, and the pervasive nature of the animal–industrial complex is such that it evades attention.[1]: 299
Nibert argues that while it has its origins in the use of animals during the establishment of agricultural societies, the animal–industrial complex is ultimately "a predictable, insidious outgrowth of the capitalist system with its penchant for continuous expansion". According to Nibert, this complex is so destructive in its pursuit of resources such as land and water to rear all of these animals as a source of profit that it warrants comparisons to
The profound cultural devaluation of other animals that permits the violence that underlies the animal industrial complex is produced by far-reaching speciesist socialization. For instance, the system of primary and secondary education under the capitalist system largely indoctrinates young people into the dominant societal beliefs and values, including a great deal of procapitalist and speciesist ideology. The devalued status of other animals is deeply ingrained; animals appear in schools merely as caged "pets," as dissection and vivisection subjects, and as lunch. On television and in movies, the unworthiness of other animals is evidenced by their virtual invisibility; when they do appear, they generally are marginalized, vilified, or objectified. Not surprisingly, these and numerous other sources of speciesism are so ideologically profound that those who raise compelling moral objections to animal oppression largely are dismissed, if not ridiculed.[2]: 208
Contributors to the 2013 book Animals and War, which linked
Relationship with speciesism
Piers Beirne considers
Scholars argue that all kinds of animal production is rooted in speciesism, reducing animals to mere economic resources.[10]: 422 Built on the production and slaughter of animals, the animal–industrial complex is perceived as the materialization of the institution of speciesism, with speciesism becoming "a mode of production."[10]: 422 In his 2011 book Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, J. Sanbonmatsu argues that speciesism is not ignorance or the absence of a moral code towards animals, but is a mode of production and material system imbricated with capitalism.[10]: 420
Components
The animal–industrial complex involves commodification of animals under contemporary capitalism and includes every economic activity involving animals, such as food, animal research, entertainment, fashion, companionship, and so forth,
Philosopher Steven Best explains that all these industrial complexes interrelate with and reinforce the AIC by "exploiting the nonhuman animal slaves" of the AIC.[14]: xvi–xvii For instance, the academic–industrial complex conducts research for the medical–industrial complex and Big Pharma by exploiting animals of the AIC in universities, military, and private vivisection laboratories and producing questionable research financed by the pharmaceutical–industrial complex for pharmaceutical capital.[14]: xvi–xvii These drugs, which according to Best are dubiously researched, are then patented, fast-tracked into market sales with the help of the Food and Drug Administration, and advertised through the media–industrial complex.[14]: xvii Best estimates that up to 115 million animals are killed globally every year to produce these drugs, which force human victims to succumb to the medical–industrial complex for profit by treating only the symptoms.[14]: xvii Any dissent by animal rights activists is criminalized by the security–industrial complex, which incarcerates many of the dissenters in the prison–industrial complex.[14]: xvii Twine considers the AIC as a significant component of the broader global food system.[4]: 14
Impact
Referring to the animal–industrial complex intersectionally, both Noske and Twine acknowledge the complex's negative impact on human minorities and the environment.
Borrowing from
A part of the AIC,
Scholars argue that the animal–industrial complex is also responsible for spreading of diseases from animals to humans[2]: 198 [8][26] such as the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) owing to beef consumption,[26] and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.[8][27] whose origin can be traced to the wet markets in China.[28][29][30] According to Charlotte Blattner et al., the COVID-19 crisis revealed the AIC as "a vast and unstoppable machinery."[27]: 247 Carol J. Adams considers responses to such crises as representing "a search for anthropocentric solutions to an anthropocentric problem"—that is, improve the supply of meat rather than examine the practice of meat eating—and stresses a closer scrutiny of the problem and a possible rejection of meat eating.[26]
Commodification of nonhuman animals
One of the primary impacts of the animal–industrial complex is the commodification of nonhuman animals. In the book Education for Total Liberation, Meneka Repka cites Barbara Noski as saying that the commodification of nonhuman animals in food systems is directly linked to capitalist systems that prioritize "monopolistically inclined financial interests" over the well-being of humans, nonhumans, and the environment.[31] Richard Twine furthers this stating that "corporate influences have had a direct interest through marketing, advertising, and flavour manipulation in constructing the consumption of animal products as a sensual material pleasure."[31]
Writing about wild animals being imported into France in the 18th century, historian
Political scientist Sami Torssonen argues that animal welfare has itself been commodified since the 1990s because of public concern for animals. "Scientifically-certified welfare products," which Torssonen calls "sellfare," are "producible and salable at various points in the commodity chain," subject to competition like any other commodity.[35] Social scientist Jacy Reese Anthis argues that, while there is no immanent right for animals or humans to not be commodified, there are strong practical reasons to oppose any commodification of animals, not just that which is cruel or egregious.[36]
Exploitation of humans
Scholars state that throughout history the oppression of exploited animals supported the oppression and exploitation of humans, and vice versa.
In her book, Noske discusses the issue of health risks to human workers in slaughterhouses.[4]: 16 Amy J. Fitzgerald points out to prison inmates in the United States and Canada being employed as a source of cheap labor in slaughtering and processing of animals, which scholars such as Robert R. Higgins consider as "environmental racism" wherein animals and animalized humans are symbolically paired, and as an economic rationale for the perpetuation of a specific prison population. According to Fitzgerald, this suggests a tendency toward psycho-social brutalization in such labor, which in turn jeopardize inmate rehabilitation.[4]: 17
Negative effects on workers
American slaughterhouse workers are three times more likely to suffer serious injury than the average American worker.
The worst thing, worse than the physical danger, is the emotional toll. If you work in the stick pit [where hogs are killed] for any period of time—that let's [sic] you kill things but doesn't let you care. You may look a hog in the eye that's walking around in the blood pit with you and think, 'God, that really isn't a bad looking animal.' You may want to pet it. Pigs down on the kill floor have come up to nuzzle me like a puppy. Two minutes later I had to kill them - beat them to death with a pipe. I can't care.
— Gail A. Eisnitz, [45]
The act of slaughtering animals, or of raising or transporting animals for slaughter, may engender psychological stress or trauma in the people involved.[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] A 2016 study in Organization indicates, "Regression analyses of data from 10,605 Danish workers across 44 occupations suggest that slaughterhouse workers consistently experience lower physical and psychological well-being along with increased incidences of negative coping behavior".[56] A 2009 study by criminologist Amy Fitzgerald indicates, "slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries".[57] As authors from the PTSD Journal explain, "These employees are hired to kill animals, such as pigs and cows that are largely gentle creatures. Carrying out this action requires workers to disconnect from what they are doing and from the creature standing before them. This emotional dissonance can lead to consequences such as domestic violence, social withdrawal, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and PTSD".[58]
Slaughterhouses in the United States commonly illegally employ and exploit underage workers and illegal immigrants.
See also
- Ag-gag
- Animal liberation
- Concentrated animal feeding operation
- Golden Triangle of Meat-packing
- List of industrial complexes
- Live export
- Meat industry
- Meat packing industry
- World Scientists' Warning to Humanity
References
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If the idea of an animal industrial complex seemed a bit outlandish—maybe even a little paranoid—to anyone a few paragraphs back, perhaps now? … not so much.
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The dramatic deforestation resulting from land conversion for agriculture and meat production could be reduced via adopting a diet that reduces meat consumption. Less meat can translate not only into less heat, but also more space for biodiversity . . . Although among many Indigenous populations, meat consumption represents a cultural tradition and a source of protein, it is the massive planetary monopoly of industrial meat production that needs to be curbed
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Further reading
- Matsuoka, Atsuko; Sorenson, John (2018). Critical Animal Studies: Towards Trans-species Social Justice. Rowman and Littlefield International—Intersections series. London: ISBN 978-1-78660-647-1.
- Nibert, David, ed. (2017). Animal Oppression and Capitalism. ISBN 978-1440850738.
- Nocella II, Anthony J.; Sorenson, John; Socha, Kim; Matsuoka, Atsuko (2014). Defining Critical Animal Studies: An Intersectional Social Justice Approach for Liberation. Institute for Critical Animal Studies. Bern: Peter Lang. ISSN 1058-1634
- Taylor, Nik; Twine, Richard (2014). The rise of Critical Animal Studies. From the Margins to the Centre. Routledge Advances in Sociology. New York: ISBN 9781138125919.