Animal–industrial complex (AIC) is a concept used by activists and scholars to describe what they contend is the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of animals. The term was adapted from the "Military-industrial complex" outlined by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. Proponents of the term claim that activities described by the term differ from individual acts of animal cruelty in that they constitute institutionalized animal exploitation.
AIC is argued to include every economic activity involving animals, such as the food industry (e.g., meat, dairy, poultry, apiculture), animal testing (e.g., academic, industrial, animals in space), medicine (e.g., bile and other animal products), clothing (e.g., leather, silk, wool, fur), labor and transport (e.g., working animals, animals in war, remote control animals), tourism and entertainment (e.g., circus, zoos, blood sports, trophy hunting, animals held in captivity), selective breeding (e.g., pet industry, artificial insemination), and so forth.
Killing more than 200 billion land and aquatic animals every year, the AIC has been implicated in climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, the Holocene extinction, and the spreading of diseases from animals to humans, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Definitions The expression animal–industrial complex was coined by the Dutch cultural anthropologist and philosopher Barbara Noske in her 1989 book Humans and Other Animals, saying that animals "have become reduced to mere appendages of computers and machines." The expression relates the practices, organizations, and overall industry that turns animals into food and other commodities to the military–industrial complex.
Richard Twine later refined the concept, regarding it as the "partly opaque and multiple set of networks and relationships between the corporate (agricultural) sector, governments, and public and private science. With economic, cultural, social and affective dimensions it encompasses an extensive range of practices, technologies, images, identities and markets." Twine also discusses the overlap between the AIC and other industrial complexes, such as the prison–industrial complex, entertainment–industrial complex, and pharmaceutical–industrial complex. Sociologist David Nibert defines the animal–industrial complex as "a massive network that includes grain producers, ranching operations, slaughterhouse and packaging firms, fast food and chain restaurants, and the state, which he claims "has deep roots in world history."
According to Twine, the AIC essentially refers to the triple helix of influential, powerful systems that control knowledge systems about meat production, namely, the government, the corporate sphere, and the academy.
Origin and properties
Although Nibert states the origin of the animal–industrial complex can be traced back to the time when domestication of animals began, Sorenson proposes that it was only since 1945 that the complex began to grow significantly under contemporary capitalism. Kim Stallwood says that the animal–industrial complex is "an integral part of the neoliberal, transnational order of increasing privatization and decreasing government intervention, favouring transnational corporations and global capital." According to Stallwood, two milestones mark the shift in human attitudes toward animals that empowered the animal–industrial complex, namely, Chicago and its stockyards and slaughterhouses from 1865 and the post–World War II developments such as intensive factory farms, industrial fishing, and xenotransplantation. In the words of Nibert, the Chicago slaughterhouses were significant economic powers of the early 20th century and were "famous for the cruel, rapid-paced killing and disassembly of enormous numbers of animals." To elucidate animal–industrial complex, Stallwood cites Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which explicitly describes the mistreatment of animals during their lives until they end up at the slaughterhouse. He also quotes Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka, which compares treatment of animals with the Holocaust and explains how the disassembly of animals in the slaughterhouses inspired Henry Ford's assembling of cars in factories and how it further influenced Nazi Germany in building concentration camps and gas chambers.
According to Stallwood, the animal–industrial complex breeds animals in the billions in order to make products and services for human consumption, and all these animals are considered legal property of the animal–industrial complex. The animal–industrial complex is said to have transformed the already confused relationship between human and non-human animals, significantly increasing the consumption and threatening human survival, and the pervasive nature of the animal–industrial complex is such that it evades attention.
Nibert argues that while it has its origins in the use of animals during the establishment of agricultural societies, the animal–industrial complex is ultimately "a predictable, insidious outgrowth of the capitalist system with its penchant for continuous expansion". According to Nibert, this complex is so destructive in its pursuit of resources such as land and water to rear all of these animals as a source of profit that it warrants comparisons to Attila the Hun. As the human population grows to a projected 9 billion by the middle of the century, meat production is expected to increase by 40%. Nibert further states:
Contributors to the 2013 book Animals and War, which linked critical animal studies and critical peace studies, explored the connections between the animal–industrial complex and the military–industrial complex, proposing and analysing the idea of a military-animal industrial complex. The exploitation of animals, argues Colin Salter, is not necessary to military–industrial complexes, but it is a foundational and central element of the military–industrial complex as it actually exists. One of the aims of the book as a whole was to argue for the abolition of the military-animal industrial complex and all wars.
Relationship with speciesism
Piers Beirne considers speciesism as the ideological anchor of the intersecting networks of the animal–industrial complex, such as factory farms, vivisection, hunting and fishing, zoos and aquaria, wildlife trade, and so forth. Amy J. Fitzgerald and Nik Taylor argue that the animal–industrial complex is both a consequence and cause of speciesism, which according to them is a form of discrimination similar to racism or sexism. They also argue that the obfuscation of meat's animal origins is a critical part of the animal–industrial complex under capitalist and neoliberal regimes. Speciesism results in the belief that humans have the right to use non-human animals, which is so pervasive in the modern society.
Lees and Nodding argue that all kinds of animal production is rooted in speciesism, reducing animals to mere economic resources. Built on the production and slaughter of animals, the animal–industrial complex is perceived as the materialization of the institution of speciesism, with speciesism becoming "a mode of production." In his 2011 book Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, John Sanbonmatsu argues that speciesism is not ignorance or the absence of a moral code towards animals, but is a mode of production and material system imbricated with capitalism.
Components
According to Paula Arcari, the animal–industrial complex involves commodification of animals under contemporary capitalism and includes every economic activity involving animals, such as food, animal research, entertainment, fashion, companionship, and so forth, all of which are seen as consequences of animal exploitations. The AIC is accused of involvement in a range of perceived wrongs, including animal agribusiness and its networks, or the agro-industrial complex (which includes animal agriculture, the meat and dairy industries, factory farms, poultry, apiculture, aquaculture, and the like), intersecting with various other industrial complexes that involve exploitation of animals, such as the pharmaceutical–industrial complex, medical–industrial complex, vivisection–industrial complex, cosmetic–industrial complex, entertainment–industrial complex, academic–industrial complex, security–industrial complex, prison–industrial complex, and so forth.
Philosopher Steven Best believes that all these industrial complexes interrelate with and reinforce the AIC by "exploiting the nonhuman animal slaves" of the AIC. For instance, the academic–industrial complex conducts research for the medical–industrial complex and Big Pharma by exploiting animals of the AIC in universities, military, and private vivisection laboratories and producing questionable research financed by the pharmaceutical–industrial complex for pharmaceutical capital. These drugs, which according to Best are dubiously researched, are then patented, fast-tracked into market sales with the help of the Food and Drug Administration, and advertised through a posited media–industrial complex. Best estimates that up to 115 million animals are killed globally every year to produce these drugs, which force human victims to succumb to the medical–industrial complex for profit by treating only the symptoms. Any dissent by animal rights activists is criminalized by the security–industrial complex, which incarcerates many of the dissenters in the prison–industrial complex. Twine considers the AIC as a significant component of the broader global food system.
Impact
Referring to the animal–industrial complex intersectionally, both Noske and Twine both claim the complex's negative impact on human minorities and the environment. According to Kathleen Stachowski, the AIC "naturalizes the human as a consumer of other animals." The enormity of the AIC, according to Stachowski, includes "its long reach into our lives, and how well it has done its job normalizing brutality toward the animals whose very existence is forgotten." She states that the corporate dairy industry, the government, and schools form the troika of the animal–industrial complex's immense influence, which hides from the public's view the animal rights violations and cruelties happening within the dairy industry. Thirukkumaran proposes that while critical animal theory acknowledges the universities' position as centers of knowledge production, it also states that the academy plays a problematic role of being a crucial mechanism within the AIC.
Borrowing from Dwight D. Eisenhower's military–industrial complex warning, Stachowski states that the vast and powerful AIC determines what children eat because people have failed to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence" and that Eisenhower's parallels are strikingly similar to the AIC in that the complex involves "the very structure of our society" and completely influences the society's economic, political, and even spiritual spheres. Stachowski also states that the troika "hijacks" schoolchildren by promoting milk in the K-12 nutrition education curriculum and making them "eat the products of industrial animal production."