Today, based on the growing body of work by ethologists and biologists about the profound mindedness and emotional life of other animals, we can assu… - David Nibert

Domesecration fueled the rise of capitalism, and many of its most deplorable colonial and imperialist practices have shaped the contemporary world. Today, capitalism promotes domesecration on an enormous level. Tens of billions of animals are tortured and brutally killed every year to produce growing profits for twenty-first century elites, who hold investments in the corporate equivalents of Chinggis Khan. These new khans are the corporate "persons" whose ranks include Tyson Foods, ConAgra, Smithfield, Pilgrim's Pride (a subsidiary of JBS "Beef"), Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Perdue Farms, Maple Leaf Foods, Vestey Foods, United "Egg" Producers, United "Poultry" Growers Association, National Corn Growers' Association, American Soybean Association, the National Restaurant Association, the International "Meat" Trade Association, McDonalds, Wendy's, "Burger" King, Red Lobster, and YUM! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silvers). They display a pathological, single-minded pursuit of profit that is often more subtle but certainly as violent, destructive, and ultimately deadly as the practices of the murderous khans of Eurasia's past. These and other actors in the animal-industrial complex—including the World Bank, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, agricultural departments in major land-grant universities, the Chicago Board of Trade, innumerable advertising and marketing firms, and related enterprises—exert enormous economic, cultural, and political influence to promote the consumption of "meat," "dairy," "eggs," and "seafood" and to protect the interests of those who profit from it. Contemporary domination of the world by global capitalist elites is furthered by corporate-friendly, so-called free-trade agreements and by the World Trade Organization, which has joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as a champion of corporate capitalism.

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.

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.