Treated Like Animals: Unpacking the Use and Abuse of Human and Nonhuman Animals in U.S. Slaughterhouses with Marek Muller, Ph.D

Friday, April 12, 2024

  • 4:00 PM - 4:30 PM

  • On Zoom (Pacific Time Zone) (map)

Description:

RACE-Approval Pending for 0.5 CE Credits, Course #20-1174396

This presentation is based on my academic publication regarding the violence experienced by livestock animals en route to slaughter and the human workers whose job it is to slaughter them. The emphasis is on industrial, large-scale slaughter industries. The presentation emphasizes the physical, psychological, and social consequences experiences by both the humans and livestock animals in the abattoir as they come into contact with one another. Livestock animals experience massive welfare violations whereas workers are subject to harmful working conditions. Both parties are rendered 'socially dead' by virtue of their identity characteristics: species, ethnicity, and/or class. Thus, participants will learn the necessity of forging an 'unholy alliance' wherein advocacy is necessary not only for slaughtered animals and not only for abused laborers, but for both simultaneously and in direct relation to one another.

Students will learn about the psychological, physical, and social tolls experienced by laborers in U.S. industrial slaughterhouses. They will learn about the animal welfare violations that occur in slaughterhouses prior to and during slaughter. They will learn how these are not separate issues, but interrelated ones.

30 minutes lecture time.