Big Ag has historically endangered the most marginalized individuals in its quest for profit. During the pandemic, slaughterhouse workers and farmed animals have often been the first to suffer.... Speciesism is integral to the marginalization of and normalized violence against those who are racially “othered.”
USDA/Preston Keres
Workers stand shoulder to shoulder in a freezing room. Workers cut and clean
5,000 cattle carcasses every day. The fast pace of the conveyor belt, which
requires workers to stand side by side to carve the carcasses, makes social
distancing almost impossible. The difficulty of the labor makes keeping on a
mask difficult—though most of the employees are not given masks to begin
with. Under these conditions, COVID-19 spreads quickly.
The majority of people put on the front lines in slaughterhouses are Black
Brown Indigenous People of Color (BBIPOC) and immigrants. At companies such
as Tyson, Cargill, and Smithfield Foods, the employees who work some of the
most demanding, underpaid jobs in the country are currently facing
significant health risks.
A CDC disparity report, published July 7, 2020, found that 87 percent of
COVID-19 cases at slaughterhouses occurred among racial minorities. The
report found that Asian and Hispanic workers faced the brunt of the threat.
This isn’t because BBIPOC are less cautious, but because of the structural
racism endemic to meatpacking plants. This structural racism places white
folks in safer managerial positions and BBIPOC in front-line work.
In addition to pervasive structural racism, the poor response to COVID-19 by
big meat companies is also emblematic of speciesism, a concept that humans
are superior to the animal ‘Other,’ which leads to the exploitation of
nonhuman animals. This lack of care for nonhuman animals is apparent in the
recent mass killings of farmed animals related to COVID-19. Farms are being
forced to kill millions of animals because they are no longer profitable.
This is a perfect example of speciesism. Instead of seeing animals as
“someone,” they view them as “things,” making it easier to enact violence
against them.
The racism and speciesism illustrated by the industry’s response to COVID-19
are intimately entangled. Writer Leah Kirts has argued in the anthology
Queer and Trans Voices: Achieving Liberation Through Consistent
Anti-Oppression that both farmworkers and animals are exploited in similar
ways. She contends that speciesism is integral to the marginalization of and
normalized violence against those who are racially “othered.”
Activist-scholar Julia Feliz calls this concept “racialized speciesism.”
They contend that BBIPOC have been “animalized” and “otherized” by white
supremacist culture to “establish … hierarchies of inequality and
oppression.” Kirts’ and Feliz’s sentiments are echoed by other
activist-scholars like Dr. A. Breeze Harper and Christopher Sebastian, who
have written on the interconnections between speciesism and white supremacy.
“A serious commitment to anti-racism will involve a deep commitment to
animals,” and vise versa, according to activist-scholar Syl Ko, co-author of
the book Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from
Two Sisters. Because, as Ko explains, speciesism has a socio-political
impact—it not only harms animals but also works with white supremacy to
dehumanize BBIPOC.
What it means to be human, versus what it means to be an “animal,” is
influenced by white supremacy. Ko contends that if to be human is, at its
perceived best, “an expression of whiteness,” the “animal” is anything that
deviates from that. She argues that in order to decolonize oneself from the
white supremacist logic that “posits the ‘human’ as whiteness,” one must
also dismantle one’s internalized speciesist logic—that to be human is
superior to being an animal. This has led us to value white lives over
BBIPOC lives and the lives of humans over other species.
Now, animal welfare groups are recognizing that the oppression faced by
animals in factory farming also extends to the marginalization faced by
slaughterhouse workers. In July, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF)
launched a whistleblower campaign to report COVID-19-related abuses towards
animals and humans, focusing on the mass killing of animals during the
pandemic, as well as issues of worker safety. PETA has also demanded greater
worker protections, such as slowing the speed of the cutting line and giving
more space between slaughterhouse workers.
“It’s not only animals—slaughterhouses can be deadly for workers, too,” says
PETA Latino.
The fights for more equitable treatment of marginalized humans and animals,
to be effective on either front, must address both speciesism and racism.
Coalitions are already forming between animal, labor, and environmental
organizations and groups. The environmental and animal advocacy group Food
and Water Watch and poultry worker rights organization, Venceremos, together
filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Tyson is
misrepresenting workers’ safety.
In June, facing nearly 100 slaughterhouse
worker deaths related to COVID-19, the Iowa chapter of the League of United
Latin American Citizens (LULAC) called for Americans to boycott meat. The
chapter asked consumers to stand in solidarity with workers who it claims
are “being forced into a death march by an administration and an industry
that place profit over lives.”
Since April, COVID-19 has brought international attention to the poor
conditions faced by workers and farmed animals, but this is not a new
phenomenon. Big Ag companies have historically endangered the most
marginalized individuals in a quest for profit. Meatpacking workers have one
of the most dangerous jobs in the world and the industry has regularly
denied employees bathroom breaks and threatened deportation when workers
voice their concerns, which often results in emotional abuse and humiliation
by managers.
Previous investigations of meatpacking plants further illustrated how
companies have routinely prioritized profits over workers’ safety and public
health. The industry also normalizes violence against factory-farmed
animals, which account for 99 percent of animals raised for food in the
United States. On these farms, animals are crammed into confined spaces,
bred for quick and painful growth, and slaughtered for food at a fraction of
their natural lifespan.
During COVID-19, companies have illustrated that not only do animals’ lives
not matter to them but that the lives of their workers are also considered
disposable. Despite the persistent threat of the pandemic, meatpacking
workers dependent on their meager wages risk their lives in slaughter
facilities. As outbreaks continue to disproportionately affect immigrant and
BBIPOC slaughterhouse workers, it is paramount to acknowledge how racism and
speciesism are inherently connected. To fight against the oppression of
meatpacking workers, we must also simultaneously fight against the
normalized violence against farmed animals.
Zane McNeill is a nonbinary activist, scholar, writer, and artist whose co-edited collection, Queer and Trans Voices: Achieving Liberation Through Consistent Anti-Oppression, was recently published by Sanctuary Publishers.
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