Connecting Animal Welfare Concerns to Human Exploitation

Each of us has probably seen, and possibly even shared ourselves, videos showing how animals are treated in the livestock industry. While they stem from a concern about a ‘blind spot’ in the public imagination concerning the processes that bring animal products to our supermarkets, restaurants and kitchens, I can’t help but often notice an absence even in these videos. One fact of the industry that such media has succeeded in highlighting is the practice of chick culling: killing male chicks as they do not lay eggs or grow as large as females, making them unprofitable even for meat. Most videos on the playlist on this website show the gruesome ‘disassembly line’ that ends with chicks being crushed to death by machinery (typically a grinder). Here, the automation, and the machinery, is part of the horror. But practically none of the videos show any people working the disassembly line.

The majority of work in slaughterhouses does require significant human involvement - most animals there are not baby chicks and are large and volatile, meaning they need supervision and cannot be processed by machines. Even if the the focus of this media is animal cruelty, we cannot ignore who is inflicting it. It would be wrong to characterise slaughterhouse workers as people who sign up to inflict violence; these jobs are low-paying, and do not require much experience, and as such attract people who might not have the ability to negotiate more dignified, safer jobs. Animal rights activists might argue that to redirect our attention to the humans implicated in this industry only plays into the hierarchy that places the lives of humans above those of animals, and makes such treatment imaginable. However, the oppression of humans and animals is too interlinked to separate our examination of them.

Slaughterhouse workers may have a more violent job than normal, but unlike other jobs that also require violence (police, military), they are not afforded a special status to do so. In fact, their working conditions are abysmal. A report by public interest law project Nebraska Appleseed surveyed workers who said that their supervisors abused them; the disassembly line was continually sped up, leading to a high injury rate; these injuries received inadequate treatment or became justification for firing workers. If we care only about the welfare of animals in the livestock industry, we miss a large part of the picture - the welfare of people implicated in the industry, hardly by choice.

As long ago as 1904, Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle exposed the appalling conditions of the meatpacking industry and highlighted that the industry hinged upon the exploitation of immigrants. But to his dismay, the public and policy reaction focused on the fact that the meat produced in these factories was often contaminated. Reforms in the livestock industry have been aimed at ensuring the meat is safe for consumers, which is perhaps an indication of where its priorities lie. As long as there is the incentive of profit, the owners of these factories will display little interest in improving worker conditions. On the other hand, the outrage around animal welfare has lead to results. Cage-free eggs are now available at every supermarket. This article from 2016 describes plans to develop technology that would allow eggs to be tested for the sex of the chicks that will hatch, so that instead of killing the male chicks, those eggs can be discarded - a policy negotiated by The Humane League, a non-profit focused on animal welfare.

Even without strenuously exercising the sociological imagination, it seems apparent that such reforms only reinforce the aim of maximum productivity by making the livestock industry ever more ‘efficient’, and reducing cruelty is only a byproduct. Animal husbandry has probably been a part of every society, but the form it takes in ours is unprecedented: massive commercial slaughterhouses are not the only way we can get meat. The horror of them is not that animals are killed, but that the way they operate leaves no room for the consideration of either the animals’ or the workers’ welfare.

More evidence as to the atypical nature of the livestock industry is in the spillover effects. Increased rates of alcoholism and domestic violence have been reported in the households of factory farm workers. Sinclair noted in The Jungle that “men who have to crack the heads of animals all day seem to get into the habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on their families, between times”. A 2009 study sought to explain why crime rates increase in a community after a slaughterhouse begins operation there. Social disorganisation theory, which holds that as heterogeneity increases in a population, social institutions are weakened and crime increases, might seek to explain this using the demographics of the workforce (usually young men, often immigrants). But the authors argue that it is a result of the nature of slaughterhouse work. In comparison to other industries with similar workforce demographics, and demanding manual work, it is only slaughterhouses that are associated with an increase in violent crime - lending support to Sinclair’s hypothesis.

I would conclude then that the focus on the plight of animals in the livestock industry needs to be broadened to include how humans are also exploited by the industry, as well as how being made to inflict violence on animals can make workers more likely to inflict violence on others. Any attempt to reform or replace our current system of animal husbandry would do better to take the human factor into consideration. If we really do value human lives over those of animals, this strategy should be more successful.

Sources:

“Baby Chicks Ground Up Alive - The Truth About Eggs.” Kinder World, https://www.kinderworld.org/videos/egg-industry/baby-chicks-ground-up-alive/.

Constitutional Rights Foundation. “Upton Sinclairs The Jungle: Muckraking the Meat-Packing Industry - Constitutional Rights Foundation.” Bill of Rights in Action, vol. Volume 24, no. No. 1, Fall 2008, http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-24-1-b-upton-sinclairs-the-jungle-muckraking-the-meat-packing-industry.html.

Maryn McKenna. “By 2020, Male Chicks May Avoid Death By Grinder.” National Geographic, June 2016, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/06/by-2020--male-chicks-could-avoid-death-by-grinder/.

Nebraska Appleseed. “The Speed Kills You”: The Voice of Nebraska’s Meatpacking Workers. 2009, https://neappleseed.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/01/the_speed_kills_you_100410.pdf.

Hosie, Rachel. “This Investigator Goes Undercover in Factory Farms to Expose the Brutal Animal Abuse That Is Standard Treatment.” The Independent, 4 Jan. 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/animal-abuse-factory-farms-undercover-investigators-pigs-chickens-cows-turkeys-mercy-for-animals-a7501816.html.

Fitzgerald, Amy J., et al. “Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates: An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From ‘The Jungle’ Into the Surrounding Community.” Organization and Environment, 2009, http://www.animalstudies.msu.edu/Slaughterhouses_and_Increased_Crime_Rates.pdf.