Seeing the potential lives of animals might look like when they are not part of the food system, and how complex they are as individuals, rather than what they are reduced to through the lens of animal agriculture.
Discovering the emotional violence we inflict on farmed animals and the complex natures of animals that for too long we have seen as nothing more than commodities.
Image from Amy Jones / Moving Animals
As a brown-feathered chicken is forced upside-down into a metal chute with
her head exposed, chickens in the wired cage next to her bristle their
feathers and squawk quietly. At this small-scale slaughterhouse in Hanoi,
Vietnam, various birds sit, caged and waiting in full view of the killing
floor, where the work has just begun. A worker takes a sharp knife,
punctures the neck of the chicken in the chute, and holds her beak while the
blood drains out. Beside her, another chicken watches closely. I take my
camera and begin to document the scene, painfully aware that these animals
are witnessing the deaths of their companions. This is in no way an isolated
incident, and each time I’ve documented an animal witnessing the death of
another, I wonder, do they know what’s coming? Are they aware that they’re
next in line? It is this sentiment that I strive to explore in the photo
essay “Next in Line.”
My own reflections here are speculative, as there are currently few-to-no
reliable studies that address the trauma that animals face when witnessing
the death of others on the slaughter line. But what research shows is that
farmed animals are sentient and emotionally complex individuals: cows are
able to “catch” each other’s feelings of stress, sheep can recognize fear in
other sheep, chickens worry about the future, and pigs can take the
perspective and feel the emotional state of another.
Typically, when farmed animals have been the subjects of such research, it
has usually been through the lens of their commodification as a food source.
It is only more recently that scientists have begun to further explore the
cognition and emotions of farmed animals because for so long, they were seen
as just that: ‘farm animals’. Now, this growing research confirms to us
beyond doubt that farmed animals are complex individuals, capable of
experiencing fear, pain, joy, comfort, and a whole variety of other
emotions.
Despite the evidence, we continue to subject these animals to overwhelming
levels of emotional and physical trauma. The majority of land animals farmed
for food (indeed, 99 percent of farmed animals in the U.S.) are kept on
huge, overcrowded, industrialized farms. Living in dark, filthy sheds
without natural sunlight, their natural behaviors (such as foraging,
perching, nesting, etc.) are severely restricted or denied entirely.
A Faunalytics report exploring slaughter from a philosophical standpoint
states that it is currently unclear whether animals possess a concept of
death and are able to fear it, but that “until we know more about animals,
it might be premature to accept that they lack this understanding.” And that
is a key issue: we don’t know what farmed animals can perceive not because
they don’t perceive, but because we’re still learning. You simply have to
spend an hour at an animal sanctuary watching a pig snuggle up with their
favorite soft toy, a chicken purring quietly as they enjoy a petting
session, or a cow standing close to their best friend to know that we’ve
barely scratched the surface.
Image from Amy Jones / Moving Animals
Photographers and creators are working to show animals through a different
lens, one which allows them to be seen as the individuals that they are.
Vegan artist Isa Leshko explores this in her photography book Allowed to
Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries. It’s a rare,
precious piece of work (most farmed animals are killed at just a few months
old). For a moment Leshko’s photographs show us something that we’ve likely
never seen before—the elderly decline of farmed animals who are spending
their final days in thick beds of clean hay, sunlight warming their backs.
That these photos are so surprising shows just how little we know about the
lives of farmed animals: we deny them even the chance to age, and
essentially even the chance to live.
And when it comes to aquatic animals, our knowledge is even more sparse.
There are nearly a quarter of a million species (that we know of) in the
ocean, and we can’t even begin to imagine how complex these animals are. All
we see them as are lumps of food on our plates. Powerful storytelling is
attempting to change that thinking. Last year’s critically-acclaimed Netflix
documentary My Octopus Teacher gave mainstream audiences a glimpse into the
fascinating lives and sentience of octopuses. What the likes of Allowed To
Grow Old and My Octopus Teacher help us to consider is what the potential
lives of animals might look like when they are not part of the food system,
and how complex they are as individuals, rather than what they are reduced
to through the lens of animal agriculture.
I hope that my photographs can be part of that wider learning process, which
is encouraging conversations and reevaluating what animals are feeling and
fearing. Animals are like us in all the ways that matter, and for just a
moment when people look at the photo essay, “Next in Line,” I hope the
viewer can pause, question, and consider the emotional violence we inflict
on farmed animals and the complex natures of animals that for too long we
have seen as nothing more than commodities.
The photo essay “Next in Line” was awarded both Best Overall and Winner of
the Animal Welfare category in the
International Vegan Film Festival photo essay
competition, 2020.
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