Animal–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.
[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.
"[1]: 299 According to Stallwood, two milestones mark the shift in human attitudes toward animals that empowered the animal–industrial complex, namely, Chicago and its stockyards and slaughterhouses from 1865 and the post–World War II developments such as intensive factory farms, industrial fishing, and xenotransplantation.
[1]: 299–300 In the words of Nibert, the Chicago slaughterhouses were significant economic powers of the early 20th century and were "famous for the cruel, rapid-paced killing and disassembly of enormous numbers of animals.
"[2]: 200 To elucidate animal–industrial complex, Stallwood cites Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which explicitly describes the mistreatment of animals during their lives until they end up at the slaughterhouse.
[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 Attila the Hun.
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.
[6]: 120 Piers Beirne considers speciesism as the ideological anchor of the intersecting networks of the animal–industrial complex, such as factory farms, vivisection, hunting and fishing, zoos and aquaria, wildlife trade, and so forth.
[8] Amy J. Fitzgerald and Nik Taylor argue that the animal–industrial complex is both a consequence and cause of speciesism, which according to them is a form of discrimination similar to racism or sexism.
[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.
"[17] The enormity of the AIC, according to Stachowski, includes "its long reach into our lives, and how well it has done its job normalizing brutality toward the animals whose very existence is forgotten.
[17] Scholars note that while critical animal theory acknowledges the universities' position as centers of knowledge production, it also states that the academy plays a problematic role of being a crucial mechanism within the AIC.
[16]: 62 Borrowing from Dwight D. Eisenhower's military–industrial complex warning, Stachowski states that the vast and powerful AIC determines what children eat because people have failed to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence" and that Eisenhower's parallels are strikingly similar to the AIC in that the complex involves "the very structure of our society" and completely influences the society's economic, political, and even spiritual spheres.
[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.
[2]: 198 The resulting change from one form of the control of state power to another, such as the older aristocracy being replaced by rising capitalism, was "every bit as violent and oppressive" as the former.
[2]: 198 The state-supported profit-driven capitalist expansion, for instance, was responsible for the killing and displacement of North America's indigenous peoples and animals.
[2]: 199 These slaughterhouses grew by exploiting vulnerable workforces, chiefly immigrants, who were undernourished, over-worked, poorly housed, and frequently sick, owing to the "macabre" nature of work as a result of the "assembly-line-style carnage" worsened by "the deafening squeals, bellows and bleating of terrified animals" being slaughtered.
[42] In a 2018 study in the Italian Journal of Food Safety, slaughterhouse workers are instructed to wear ear protectors to protect their hearing from the constant screams of animals being killed.
[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.
[61] In a report by Oxfam America, slaughterhouse workers were observed not being allowed breaks, were often required to wear diapers, and were paid below minimum wage.
