Exploited: The Unexpected Victims of Animal Agriculture

Authors

Caitlin Kelly

First Page

103

Abstract

Awareness of how nonhuman animals suffer in animal agriculture has been growing for years. But are they the only victims? Selling the products and parts of hundreds of millions of animals in the United States every year requires someone to manage those animals. It requires someone to kill those animals. And it requires someone to dismember those animals long before they ever reach the neat rows of plastic wrapped packaging at the grocery store. To accomplish this process at an industrial scale means hundreds to thousands of animals are together in barns which reek of their waste and create biohazards for humans. It means dangerously fast line speeds at slaughterhouses and hyper-focused jobs dedicated exclusively to killing animals and making repetitive cuts on their bodies. Unsurprisingly, these jobs are not desirable. The workers who do them are often desperate or do not have another choice. This article analyzes three major categories of workers in animal agriculture and how the law has failed to protect them. These categories are migrants, prisoners, and children. After exploring the unique ways each category of workers is exploited in animal agriculture, this article will explain how the law, or lack thereof, made it possible and what changes can be made to help prevent their exploitation in the future.

Recommended Citation

Caitlin Kelly, Exploited: The Unexpected Victims of Animal Agriculture, 30 Animal L. Rev. 103 (2024).
Available at: https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/alr/vol30/iss1/6