When I think about animal rights, I think about the song “Slaughterhouse” by Chat Pile. It’s on the album God’s Country (2023) and I love it because it cuts through the veil, straight to the heart of a contemporary slaughterhouse.
“There’s more screaming than you’d think.” Chat Pile has a knack for writing lines that hit me like a shotgun blast, because they appeal to the idealist inside me, the one I often worry I’ve left behind as the realities of adulthood pile up. Another great one is “Why do people have to live outside?” on the track “Why.” They make me regurgitate the rage I tended as a youth just by pointing out the obvious atrocities around us.
As of fall 2023, I’ve been a vegan for ten years. These anniversaries sneak up on you when you’re not even 30 yet - I still feel too young to have been anything for an entire decade. Right off the bat I have to say: I am imperfect, and I cheat, and consume dairy and eggs as ingredients in other things sometimes. My favourite food in the world is ice cream and I eat it on occasion. But for ten years I’ve been mostly-vegan. (I shorten this to vegan to save space and time and prevent repetitive, redundant conversations.) I have not consumed meat in ten years, nor have I purchased milk, cheese, eggs, or new leather/animal skin goods.
I’m vegan because when I was 18 I was a punk, and punk subculture is ostensibly interested in animal rights. Leftist punks should care about animal liberation, and my friends all did, and they taught me that I should too. (There was definitely an element of peer pressure here that was Not Great, but I’ll come back to that.) I thought about it for a year or so, then I stopped consuming animal products when I started my undergrad in 2013. My parents were supportive for the last couple months I lived at home, but I often just wouldn’t eat the meat they prepared when it was too much work to make a second, vegetarian protein just for me. I changed my diet and spending habits because I could not justify not doing so. I learned about the conditions in factory farms, the practices necessary to put meat and dairy and eggs on our tables, and I couldn’t morally justify voting for these practices with my dollar.
Because farmed animals are legally considered to be the property of the corporations they ‘belong’ to, animals are treated more like machines than the sensitive, emotional, and intelligent individuals they are. Animals bear the burden of the cost-saving measures on factory farms. For the entirety of their brief lives, they're unable to engage in their natural behaviors; they're maimed and operated on without anesthetic; and/or they're forcibly impregnated over and over, only to have their offspring torn away from them. - x
It’s true that there is a purist, elitist faction of veganism, and I encountered this when I was a teenager. With hindsight I can see the class breakdown that I didn’t understand back then, and it was the wealthier people in feminist club who converted to veganism first. They were also the most militant in their veganism, putting pressure on others to join them and refusing to eat animal products even if they were possible byproducts at the tail end of an ingredients list. Without speculating about the health of any of the people I knew then, I want to note that this level of particularity about what we eat is often incompatible with intuitive eating. It is a very easy way to fall into or mask an already existing eating disorder.
Militant veganism is also incompatible with poverty. Hence most of my cheating: I am still a part of the working poor, and sometimes I can’t afford not to eat things. However, it is possible to reduce consumption of animal products as a poor person. All my baking and cooking at home is vegan, and I have remained totally meat-free for a decade as a student and minimum wage worker. I believe that all of us as individuals, and our broader communities, can choose to reduce the harm we ask others to perform to animals, by buying vegan alternatives where we can.
I forgive myself for being an imperfect vegan because I have significantly reduced the harm I inflict upon animals, and I advocate for others to do the same. I also take into account my class status. So, I’m mostly-vegan.
As I grow more financially secure, I aim to align myself with abolitionist veganism. The abolitionist manifesto argues that a fight for animal rights that works on single-issue causes or “humane” practices in factory farming is counterintuitive to our end goal. Our means have to be in line with our ends, and minor improvements to animals’ welfare within the factory farming system are not compatible with the abolitionist’s core tenet: that animals are sentient beings who are relevant to our moral community and considerations. These neoliberal band-aid solutions are an industry in themselves and are not ultimately in line with animals’ liberation from our cultural agreement that they are functionally a resource for our exploitation.
Factory farming continues to grow around the world as a low-cost way of producing animal products for human consumption. However, many of the practices associated with intensive animal farming have been criticized by public health professionals and animal welfare advocates. The aim of this essay is to raise three independent moral concerns with factory farming, and to explain why the practices associated with factory farming flourish despite the cruelty inflicted on animals and the public health risks imposed on people. I conclude that the costs of factory farming as it is currently practiced far outweigh the benefits, and offer a few suggestions for how to improve the situation for animals and people.
Jonathan Anomaly, What’s Wrong With Factory Farming?, Public Health Ethics, Volume 8, Issue 3, November 2015, Pages 246–254, https://doi.org/10.1093/phe/phu001
I fear making my friends roll their eyes when I try to talk about animal rights. I’m a “good,” tolerable vegan, meaning I never try to convince anyone to come around to my side. I preface all mentions of my veganism with what I hope is charming self-deprecation, like, yeah, eyeroll, I know. She’s insufferable, am I right? But I see the consumption of meat and animal products as morally indefensible for a lot of people. Don’t throw your examples at me, I am obviously making exceptions for people with dietary restrictions and financial barriers. I will defend your right to hunt. It’s the factory farmed grocery store products that are perpetuating this cycle of torture and death.
When I do try to talk about veganism, I am often told that workers are exploited on almond farms to make almond milk or whatever. First of all, all workers are being exploited, period. I don’t think you really care about that, though - I think you use that information to justify a more convenient diet. Second, slaughterhouses are a nightmare to work in.
“It was found that SHWs [slaughterhouse workers] have a higher prevalence rate of mental health issues, in particular depression and anxiety, in addition to violence-supportive attitudes. Furthermore, the workers employ a variety of both adaptive and maladaptive strategies to cope with the workplace environment and associated stressors. Finally, there is some evidence that slaughterhouse work is associated with increased crime levels. The research reviewed has shown a link between slaughterhouse work and antisocial behavior generally and sexual offending specifically.”
Slaughterhouse workers’ mental health is proven to suffer due to the conditions and nature of their job. Many former slaughterhouse workers come forward later to expose the horror of their work. In “Slaughterhouse” Chat Pile even calls attention to the ways the workers’ heads ring from the noises, and they can “never forget” the animals’ eyes.
“At the end of the slaughter line there was a huge skip, and it was filled with hundreds of cows' heads. Each one of them had been flayed, with all of the saleable flesh removed. But one thing was still attached - their eyeballs.
Whenever I walked past that skip, I couldn't help but feel like I had hundreds of pairs of eyes watching me. Some of them were accusing, knowing that I'd participated in their deaths. Others seemed to be pleading, as if there were some way I could go back in time and save them. It was disgusting, terrifying and heart-breaking, all at the same time. It made me feel guilty. The first time I saw those heads, it took all of my strength not to vomit.”
Confessions of a slaughterhouse worker (bbc.com)https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380211030243
These places are hell on earth. I have nothing but respect for my fellow worker, and I hope that by not supporting the slaughter of animals, I contribute in some minute way to the closure of these factories. Not only for the animals, but so that no people have to work in such a place. Being a butcher is one thing; the assault on the senses as described by slaughterhouse workers is another.
I know I probably lost a lot of readers along the way here. It’s a heavy subject, it makes people feel disgust and guilt, and they get defensive and angry as a result. Thank you to anyone who spent a few minutes with me in cyberspace, talking about this. I hope you’ll do some research, and consider reducing your animal product consumption, or at least buying direct from a local farmer. Just think it over and talk to your friends about where your animal products come from.
❀Shan❀
Read for free:
Here is a list of online resources where you can start learning about factory farm conditions:
The Disgusting Things I Witnessed in Factory Farms | Informer (youtube.com)
How Are Factory Farms Cruel to Animals? (thehumaneleague.org)
Why the egg industry shreds newborn baby chicks (youtube.com)
Undercover Footage Reveals 'Cruel' Factory Fish Farm | NowThis (youtube.com)
An Inside Look at Factory Farms, via Photographer Jo-Anne McArthur | NowThis (youtube.com)