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 aroun… - David Nibert

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 consequences of these decades of activity of the animal industrial complex, in conjunction with other , such as the military industrial complex, global international banking systems and global media conglomerates, have been cataclysmic. In Latin America, for example, subsistence farmers who resisted forcible removal from the land—displacement usually caused by the influx of international loans to expand ranching, feed-crop cultivation, and related enterprises—were subjected to violent repression and death by governments backed by the United States government and commonly by soldiers trained at the U.S. School of the Americas. Many subsistence farming families were forced to migrate to urban areas where they were transformed into proletarians and became vulnerable to transnational corporations seeking exploitable workers.

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.