By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
The largest lamb slaughterhouse in the country is located in the Globeville neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. Each year, up to 500,000 young sheep are carted into the facility, and leave as packaged meat. Now, Denver is poised to be the first city in the nation to ban slaughterhouses like this one. Thanks to a campaign spearheaded by Pro Animal Future - a nonprofit organization with tactics backed by research - voters will decide this November whether to allow the facility to continue operations.
Its success or failure could have broad implications for the animal rights movement. While it's certainly not the first time that animal advocates have sought to leverage ballot initiatives - there's currently also an initiative to ban factory farms from Sonoma County, California - the Denver campaign could serve as a blueprint for future campaigns in cities across the country.
Pro Animal Future was started to test out the research generated by their sister organization, Pax Fauna. That research suggested that animal rights activists could garner success by shifting the framing of their work to ask for people's votes instead of personal dietary change - a finding that let to this and another ballot initiative in Denver.
"We had a lot of people sign these petitions, including the slaughterhouse petition, while eating animals," Aidan Kankyoku, who worked on the research and is now spearheading the campaign, tells Sentient.
Though the fate of the slaughterhouse still hangs in the balance, even getting the question on the ballot was an uphill climb. Kankyoku embarked on it in hopes of testing the findings of Pax Fauna's research. So far, those findings are holding up, which may have far-reaching implications for animal welfare groups.
Why Ballot Measures May Be More Effective Than Advocating for Dietary Change
In 2023, Pax Fauna published research, which found that calling meat out as unsustainable or cruel is not very effective for the average consumer - in part because it ignores the large role of corporations and policymakers, and relies too heavily on changing personal choice. Instead, focusing on collective action and civic duty - via voting, for example - appears to be more effective.
Those findings were based upon a series of focus groups, surveys and interviews with over 200 participants, all of whom eat meat. After writing up and publishing their findings, their next steps were clear: the new grassroots framework they had designed needed to be tested. For that testing, they chose Denver.
"This is where we have the most progressive and liberal voters who are going to take the first step and set this precedent to say 'no' to slaughterhouses," says Kankyoku. In November of last year, the team dropped off 10,488 signatures supporting a ballot initiative to ban slaughterhouses from the city - well above the 8,940 needed to get on the ballot. Pro Animal Future ran a fur ban initiative alongside the slaughterhouse ban, which received 11,708 signatures and will also be appearing on ballots in November. Each of those signatures represents a conversation with a campaigner.
A Focus on Deep Canvassing
One of those campaigners is volunteer Alaina Sigler, who runs the nonprofit The Night Sky Garden. "These very meaningful conversations are going to be one of the most important tactics for us to continue to focus on," Sigler says, referencing the deep canvassing technique at the center of the campaign. Deep canvassing relies on having sincere conversations with voters, and offers space for people to express their concerns without judgment. Though the tactic is great for helping people understand an issue, it is time intensive. "It'll be anywhere from three to 12 voters in an hour, if you're walking up to groups," says Kankyoku.
In addition to these conversations, volunteers have been hosting postcard writing parties in collaboration with other local organizations, including nearby Luvin Arms Animal Sanctuary. While most of those writing parties are dominated by people already involved with the campaign, Pro-Animal Future works hard to ensure a welcoming environment for everyone - whether they eat meat or not.
"If you have friends, family members...and they're not vegan, we actively are asking folks to bring them to the social events," Sigler, who has organized several such parties, says.
From Sigler's perspective, the campaign is cause for "immense hope for these initiatives, after not seeing much change occur locally for animals." A longtime grassroots activist, Sigler has years of experience as an organizer for Direct Action Everywhere, standing vigil outside slaughterhouses and canvassing.
She and other volunteers have also been active in another facet of the campaign: flyering the city. "We do have this kind of guerrilla marketing component of the campaign as well," says Kankyoku. In addition to the flyers, volunteers hand out stickers, chalk art and messages around the city and are working with businesses to host events.
The Economic and Political Implications of Banning Slaughterhouses
In addition to being home to the nation's largest lamb slaughterhouse, Colorado also plays host to Colorado State University (CSU). CSU is home to AgNext, (an agricultural research institute that has come under fire for its connections to animal agriculture), as well as Regional Economic Development Institute (REDI), a research center focused on economic development.
In April of this year, REDI released a policy brief arguing that eliminating the slaughterhouse could result in a maximum loss of 629 jobs and over $861 million. Kanyuko says he doesn't believe those numbers are feasible, given that the facility has 160 employees and generates roughly $250 million in revenue annually. "It's just obvious propaganda, if you're going to dig into it a little bit," he says, but "they're using the letterhead of this respected university."
The processes put into the report are standard within economics, says Dawn Thilmany, PhD, who led the team that put together the REDI brief. Analysis was based upon government data run through an economics software program that calculates likely ripple effects.
The analysis outlines three possible scenarios, based upon how much of the lamb industry exits the state of Colorado. Should the initiative pass, Thilmany is concerned that the most drastic of those is the most likely to take place. "It's [likely to be] really hard to get investors to build processing capacity in other parts of [Colorado] because they're afraid the ban is going to get wider than Denver County," she says.
From her perspective working with small producers, the Denver slaughterhouse is unique in that it allows producers to get back their animals following slaughter - a rarity within the industry. For producers who sell meat locally, getting their animals back is essential."Anyone who's selling local[ly], that's what they have to do," she says. "For lamb, I think they're about the only one who can do that, even in the region."
Even if the report's worst-case economic scenario does come to pass, points out Kankyoku, the projected impact of shutting down the slaughterhouse represents only a small fraction of the state's overall economy. In the third quarter of 2023, Colorado's real Gross Domestic Product - a measure of economic activity - was $529.1 billion.
What Comes Next
"What's so exciting about the ballot initiative approach is that we'd much rather be talking to voters than to a few city council members," says Kankyoku. Focusing on voters also means that even a loss is a win, in Kankyoku's eyes. "If we focus all our attention on engaging with the public and connecting with local businesses and building a really strong community around this objective, [even] if the measure doesn't pass, we can still feel very confident that all of that work is setting us up to do better next time, whether it's the same policy or a different policy for the next campaign."
Pro Animal Future's partner organization, Pax Fauna, is already gearing up to launch similar campaigns in cities across the country - starting with Portland.
Even with the growing popularity of ballot initiatives as a means of activism, advocates are restricted to the cities and states that allow them. But with roughly three quarters of cities allowing some form of citizen-supported legislation making, the opportunities for animal advocates are numerous.
Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.
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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
From decapitating whales with chainsaws to shooting puppies to false claims of immigrants eating cats, this election has featured an unusual amount of animal-related news. The public's reaction to most of these cases has been outrage, and rightly so. However, these reactions also reveal a moment in our culture: inconsistencies in our moral values as they pertain to animal life and unsustainable food systems are more visible than ever, and perhaps, more conflicted.
It is, of course, entirely reasonable to be horrified at the prospect of people kidnapping and eating family pets (which didn't actually happen), or someone shooting a puppy dead in a gravel pit (which did actually happen). And yet every day, billions of animals in factory farms suffer and die at the hands of humans, and there's nary a peep of outrage from the general public. Cows, pigs, chickens, fish and other livestock are every bit as capable of feeling pain as dogs or cats, but as this election has shown, only the latter tug on most Americans' heartstrings.
The collective cognitive dissonance that allows this to be true appears to be becoming more fraught - but why?
Why Are There So Many Animal Stories Right Now?
The fact that this election cycle has featured so much animal news is largely just a coincidence. But it's not entirely coincidental.
Plant-based meat, cultivated meat and other alternative proteins have grown in prominence and visibility over the last several years. While this is a very promising trend from an environmental standpoint, it's also created a notable backlash among some meat-eaters.
Several Republican governors have signed laws banning the sale of cultivated meat in their states, even though cultivated meat isn't being sold in the U.S. mass market yet. One of them, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, warned that cultivated meat is part of a plan by "elites" to end animal agriculture, and surrounded himself with cattle farmers while signing his state's bill.
Furthermore, there have been a lot of headlines in recent years claiming that veganism is on the rise. It's unclear whether this is actually true, as polling on the subject is murky, but nevertheless, these claims have made meat-eating's environmental impact and animal cruelty more prominent topics in the overall cultural zeitgeist, and this may also have played a role in the flurry of animal-related news in this election.
Speciesism, Defined
Recently, Moo-Deng the baby hippo has taken the world by storm as an adorable meme and respite from political news. Her presence is also a perfect encapsulation of the cognitive dissonance at the root of speciesism. Moo-Deng lives at a zoo in Thailand, and looks a lot like a small pig - her name even means "bouncy pork." She encapsulates the different standards we have for different animals: in her case as a baby hippo, being kept in captivity is okay - but being slaughtered like the baby pigs she so resembles would be an outrage.
The double standard regarding different animals is what's known as speciesism. David Rosengard, Managing Attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, defines speciesism as "treating two animals differently based solely on their species."
"Not their size, or their intelligence, or their socialization, or whether they're wild or domestic," Rosengard says, "but simply based on their biological species."
This is different from treating two species differently because one has more advanced cognitive abilities than the other, or one is more similar to humans than the other, or any number of other criteria. Speciesism ignores all other relevant criteria, and pegs all of a creature's moral worth to their species.
Speciesism is deeply embedded in Western attitudes towards animals, and this was illustrated perfectly when, early in the 2024 election cycle, a potential vice presidential nominee revealed to America that she once shot and killed a puppy.
Vice Presidential Prospects Shooting Animals
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was rumored to be on Donald Trump's shortlist of potential vice presidential nominees. A rising star in the Republican Party who once gifted Trump a model of Mount Rushmore with his face on it, Noem wrote and published a memoir in May - a common rite-of-passage for aspiring presidents and vice presidents.
In her memoir, Noem made the curious decision to boast about the time she shot and killed the family puppy, Cricket. As Noem tells it, Cricket had "ruined" a hunting trip by scaring away all the birds that Noem and her associates were planning on shooting. Although Cricket was "having the time of her life," Noem was "livid" at the 14-month-old dog for spoiling the hunt.
Shortly thereafter, Noem writes, Cricket got into a neighbor's yard and killed one of their chickens. This was the last straw, she says; Cricket was now behaving "like a trained assassin," and needed to be dealt with. So, Noem took the puppy to a nearby gravel pit and shot her dead.
"I hated that dog," Noem writes. She says that after killing the dog, she realized that one of the family's billy goats needed to be offed as well, as he'd been acting "nasty and mean," and so she "dragged him out to the gravel pit" and shot him as well.
It's worth unpacking the many layers of animal slaughter in Noem's story. Noem was initially upset that her puppy prevented her from killing birds; she then became angry at her puppy for killing chickens, and decided to kill the puppy in response. This, in turn, inspired her to kill a goat.
Noem's chances of becoming vice president evaporated overnight once these passages leaked. She drew near-universal condemnation for the dog-killing incident, and did herself no favors by doubling down after the fact, telling an interviewer that perhaps President Biden's dog should be put down as well.
The outrage was unsurprising, because although it sometimes feels like nothing is off-limits for politicians these days, bragging about killing puppies is still something of a taboo. And yet the response to Noem's ill-advised tale also revealed the inconsistencies embedded in the general public's attitude toward animal-killing.
For instance, there was no uproar over the fact that Noem was hunting birds in the first place. There was also much less focus on the goat's death than the dog's - and the chicken who died at the hands of Cricket elicited no sympathy at all. Noem's story is full of dead animals, but only the dog's death made people upset.
This double standard can also be seen in reactions to the other party's vice presidential nominee being a hunter. Kamala Harris's decision to tap Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate was broadly celebrated, and Walz has emerged as an unusually well-liked politician, with a staggering +37 favorability rating.
Walz, like Noem, is a proud hunter. He says that he used to keep a shotgun in his truck so he could hunt pheasants after football practice, and as Governor, he presides over his state's annual deer and fish openings - celebrations to mark the beginnings of the hunting seasons for those respective animals.
Needless to say, Walz's hunting bona fides have elicited no shock, anger or outrage among the general public. In fact, the fact that he's a hunter has been characterized by some as a political strength, as it ostensibly makes him more appealing to rural and moderate voters.
The Fake Story of Pet-Eating Immigrants
Trump ultimately tapped Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, and this led to another perfect encapsulation of speciesist attitudes among American voters.
In September, Vance falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were kidnapping and eating people's dogs and cats. This was a complete lie - Vance admitted to creating stories "so that the American media actually pays attention." But that didn't stop Trump from parroting it during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in," Trump warned. "They're eating the cats. They're eating - they're eating the pets of the people that live there."
The story was thoroughly and immediately debunked by Springfield officials and the media at large.
Nevertheless, Republicans expressed outrage at immigrants for eating pets (even though no pets were eaten), and Democrats slammed Republicans for falsely accusing immigrants of eating pets. The only point of agreement between the two sides was that killing cats and dogs for human consumption is an especially immoral thing to do.
"Culturally, Americans see dogs and cats as special," Rosengard says. "There is a history of eating all kinds of animals in the United States, but in the modern American experience, dogs and cats have largely been thought of as companion animals, not as animals you eat."
The False Claim Harris Wants to Ban Red Meat
During his time on the campaign trail, Vance also claimed, again falsely, that Harris wants to ban red meat.
"She even wants to take away your ability to eat red meat," Vance said in August. "That's how out there she is. That's real. The fake news will fact-check it. They will fact-check it true. She actually said that."
They did not "fact-check it true," however, because it wasn't true. What Harris actually said is that she supports changing the Dietary Guidelines For Americans to recommend Americans eat less red meat; this would not "take away your ability to eat red meat," however, as nobody is required to follow the federal government's dietary guidelines in the first place.
Nevertheless, the fact that Vance fear-mongered about this in the first place illustrates just how deeply Americans value carnivorism. He perceived, correctly, that voters would be aghast if they lost the right to slaughter and eat the animals they think of as food.
The most ironic part of his claims, however, is the fact that according to his wife, Vance "has adapted to" her vegetarian diet at home.
The Many Animal-Related Foibles of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
No analysis of the role of animals in the 2024 election would be complete without touching on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who became embroiled in a number of animal-related mini-scandals over the course of his now-suspended presidential campaign.
During his time as a candidate, several reports came out revealing that Kennedy had, at various points in his life:
These incidents generally elicited more bewilderment and mockery than outrage, yet even some of those reactions had a speciesist bent to them.
The dead bear incident attracted considerable media attention, but what drew less attention was what Kennedy was doing when he found the dead bear: he was "falconing," or using a trained bird to hunt wild animals - usually squirrels, rabbits and other small mammals and birds - in their natural habitats.
The fact that Kennedy staged a bizarre scene involving a dead bear drew a lot of attention and criticism. The fact that he was killing woodland creatures for sport earlier in the day drew none.
The dog/goat incident, meanwhile, again illustrated the double standards that we apply to dogs versus other animals. The idea of Kennedy eating a dog was initially appalling; the revelation that he was "merely" eating a goat diffused the situation entirely, and the outrage disappeared immediately.
How Speciesism Is Reflected in the Law
In theory, animal cruelty is illegal in the United States. But anti-cruelty laws, both on the federal and state level, contain many exceptions, caveats and carve-outs that place significant limits on what, exactly, constitutes an "animal."
For instance, the Humane Slaughter Act is a federal law that requires livestock producers to render animals unconscious before killing them, in order to minimize their pain. And yet,
in addition to being poorly enforced, the law does not apply to poultry or fish, even though
birds and fish most definitely feel pain.
The same is true of the Twenty-Eight Hour law, which places limits on how long livestock animals can be transported without stopping for rest, air and food. While the law's intent is commendable,
it also contains many exemptions, one being that, as with the Humane Slaughter Act, it doesn't extend any of its protections to poultry.
And then there's the Animal Welfare Act. This law is primarily aimed at improving the wellbeing of animals who are experimented on in medical labs, as well as cracking down on illegal animal fighting. But the law provides no
protections whatsoever to farm animals, millions of whom suffer just as much in their environments as the animals in laboratories or cockfighting rings.
Many states have enacted laws that extend additional protections to animals. The strength of these laws varies wildly from state to state, however, in large part because some have a
very restrictive definition of what an "animal" is.
"Some states will say that 'animal' is limited to vertebrate, non-human living creatures," Rosengard explains. " Other states will say that an animal is every mammal, bird or fish, except commercial poultry. That's got to be rough for birds in farms, because suddenly they don't count as animals, so none of the animal cruelty law applies to them."
The Bottom Line
This election cycle reminds us that speciesism runs deep in American political culture. The double standard and cognitive dissonance around animals is mirrored in our laws, which offer protections to some animals but not others, regardless of their capacity for pain or suffering, and often on a completely arbitrary basis.
Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.
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