David Nibert Quotes

Even without the horrendous health, environmental, and human rights consequences of the animal industrial complex, the horrific treatment of other animals that it produces is in itself a powerful and compelling reason to resist and reject the system. Sentient beings who have preferences and desires, who are capable of profound social relationships and who have inherent value apart from their ill use by the Complex, are treated essentially as inanimate objects, as "biomachines."

The capitalist system was and is not a benevolent social force created to best serve the needs of humans through the "marketplace," contrary to the propagandizing that has inundated at least the citizens in the West for a century and a half and that continues in educational systems and mass media today. Indeed, it would be impossible for an egalitarian, beneficial political-economic system to emerge from thousands of years of hypermasculine, violent, oppressive, and war-torn reality. In truth, capitalism, which morphed from the highly oppressive systems of "economic development" of the Eurasian past, simply represents a more sophisticated form of social relations in which the accumulation of wealth continues to result from exploitation, predation and violence.

Some may suggest the promotion of veganism is injurious to the poor and marginalized human population of the world. It is true that many people around the world continue to exploit animals for basic subsistence. The continued use of both domesecrated and free-living animals as food because of the absence of other dietary alternatives, linked to poverty, is itself an indictment of the capitalist system . . . Until nutritious, affordable plant-based food is available to all throughout the world, criticism of peoples who have no alternatives to exploiting animals for subsistence should be redirected against the capitalist system.

Among the most harmful capitalist programs have been the ongoing support and promotion of industries that violently oppress other animals, especially the "animal industrial complex (A-IC)." In the United States, well into the twenty-first century, there continue to be enormous U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) support; subsidies for feed crops; the use and destruction of public lands by ranchers; the killing of millions of free-living other animals—from prairie dogs to wolves—to protect "livestock"; and legislation to silence and even criminalize industry critics.

Under the early capitalist system, genocidal invasions and the and other animals around the world continued. Spain ravaged what is now Latin America, Britain wreaked havoc everywhere from Ireland to Australia to North America, and the capitalist class in these and other nations of Europe scrambled to accumulate wealth through the plundering of Africa, with the bodies of countless humans and other animals left in their wake.

The is expected to reach nine billion by 2050, and the animal industrial complex is predicting a 40 percent increase in "meat" production by that date. Just by 2020, it is projected that 80 percent of the world’s agricultural land will be used for pasture or for feed crop production. Despite the public health, environmental, and social consequences, the continues to promote "meat" consumption among the more affluent and states "the developing world is projected to be the most important supplier to this growing market." Such a policy will only increase violence, repression, environmental destruction, landlessness, poverty, hunger, and death.

Humanity's systematic killing of other animals, as well as the subjugation of groups of humans, did not begin until males created weapons and began hunting other animals, approximately 50,000 years ago. The emergence of increasingly aggressive males, brandishing weapons, began to degrade the egalitarian nature of human societies, and the status of women and less powerful males began to decline. The corruption of human society was powerfully furthered 10,000 years ago, when humans began to capture and confine other animals and control their reproduction, and the consequences for human societal development were enormous and tragic.

The profound cultural devaluation of other animals that permits the violence that underlies the animal industrial complex is produced by far-reaching speciesist socialization. For instance, the system of primary and secondary education under the capitalist system largely indoctrinates young people into the dominant societal beliefs and values, including a great deal of procapitalist and speciesist ideology. The devalued status of other animals is deeply ingrained; animals appear in schools merely as caged “pets,” as dissection and vivisection subjects, and as lunch. On television and in movies, the unworthiness of other animals is evidenced by their virtual invisibility; when they do appear, they generally are marginalized, vilified, or objectified. 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.

Environmental destruction is another consequence of the animal industrial complex. Raising large groups of cows and sheep has long been tied to and in many parts of the world. In Central America, for example, between 1950 and 1990 the most significant change in land in the region was the destruction of forests for the purpose of creating pasture. Tropical forests in the area fell from 29 million hectares to 17 million during the period. In all of Latin America the conversion of tropical forests into pastures and ranches for raising cows for food is responsible for more deforestation than all other production systems combined. The creation of pasture accounts for roughly 75 percent of global deforestation.

The modern , a massive network that includes grain producers, ranching operations, and , and chain restaurants, and the state, has deep roots in world history. Historically, the treatment of both devalued humans and other animals has been characterized by exploitation and violence, and the fates of the two groups have been deeply entangled. From the time humans first captured, confined and controlled the reproduction of such animals as cows, pigs, sheep, goats and horses—which largely benefited powerful elites—in turn [those activities] facilitated human social stratification, domination, and widespread violence.

An essential part of any successful plan for the promotion of global justice must be a campaign for the elimination of the practice of oppressing other animals, especially as sources of food. As we work for a democratic global economy, we must transform the system that uses increasingly precious land and water for profitable “meat” production into a truly "green" form of agriculture organized to provide nutritious plant-based food where it is needed throughout the world—and to parts of the world where many have few alternatives to exploiting animals. In a more just global economy, with that require much less land than is now used for "meat" production, land would be available to resettle millions trapped in urban squalor. Land also could be set aside as sanctuaries for other animals—with whom humans must learn to peacefully co-exist. Such change will take more than just a challenge to the animal industrial complex; it will require the development of a social-economic as it has developed across multiple fronts of social antagonism.

By the mid-twentieth century, elites had to find ways to surmount the natural limitations to the basic and destructive imperative of the capitalist system—the imperative for unending growth and expansion—in order to continue the accumulation of vast wealth. They turned to the ideology of neoliberalism in a renewed drive for laissez-faire policies, in which government largely withdraws from "interfering" with the economy, leading to nearly unrestrained profit-taking. While capitalists were able to fend off or minimize government interventions proposed to create or improve the quality of life for countless humans, they were quite focused putting the power of the state to work to aggressively protect and advance their interests (i.e., "corporate welfare"). Through deregulation, tax breaks and the squandering of taxpayer dollars, large corporations and elites have flourished while masses around the world face harsh austerity programs. And in the United States, enormous public resources are diverted into the military-industrial complex and twenty-first century invasions and warfare.

Truly free and democratic discussion, planning, and policy implementation for the good of all will be possible only in a democratic socialist world order free of elite social engineering and control of the state and without consciousness-consuming economic marginalization and deprivation. Moving toward an end to domesecration and the related injurious practices would be much more likely in a societal and global order characterized by and a democratically controlled state and mass media. Under a more egalitarian system, one with a much greater potential to inform the public about vital global issues—including their connection to domesecration—campaigns to improve the lives of other animals would be more abolitionist in nature.

Most humans know little about the daily oppression and suffering of other animals. Few ponder the sentience or experience of life of other animals; most are too busy trying to make ends meet financially, or merely survive day to day. Even among the relatively few human animals who do consider, grieve, and even protest their circumstances and those of the other animals on the earth, even fewer consider the underlying roles played by the capitalist system and patriarchy. Pervasive problems such as illness, warfare and inequality are thought to be merely the way of the world, perhaps the product of human nature, and simply not amenable to change. But such a point of view fails to explain why human animals lived relatively peaceably and communally with one another, as well as with other animals, For most of the 200,000-plus years that our species existed in its present form.

Today, based on the growing body of work by ethologists and biologists about the profound mindedness and emotional life of other animals, we can assume that, for the most part, the other animals' experience of capture, enslavement, use, and slaying was one of suffering and violence. While much of their treatment unquestionably was in the form of direct physical violence, the animals' systematic enslavement and oppression also resulted in their inability to meet their basic needs, the loss of self-determination, and the loss of opportunity to live in a natural way—an indirect form of violence known as "structural violence." Archeological findings of the remains of early enslaved other animals provide evidence of their suffering. Generally, examination of the remains of animals held captive thousands of years ago reveals bone pathologies resulting from physical trauma, poor diet, chronic arthritis, gum disease and high levels of stress.