Description:
Our culture is in deep denial about our relationship to the animals we eat. We condemn Michael Vick as cruel for fighting dogs but hide away the violence that brings meat to our tables in slaughterhouses and factory, delegating the dirty work of killing animals to an exploited workforce.
Moderator:
Katie Pryor, NYC Regional Outreach Coordinator, Vegan Outreach
Presenters:
Gary Francione, Rutgers law and philosophy professor and author: Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or Your Dog, will discuss the literally delusional thinking that characterizes our animal ethics, as discussed in in his controversial 2007 essay, “We’re All Michael Vick.” We regard animals as having a moral status but we use them in ways that are wholly inconsistent with that view.
Timothy Pachirat, assistant professor of politics at the New School and author, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight, brings to life the massive, routine killing of animals for human consumption from the perspective of slaughterhouse workers. Drawing on five months undercover on a slaughterhouse kill floor, he explores the slaughter industry and how our society facilitates violent labor and hides what we find too repugnant to contemplate.
Victoria Moran, author of Main Street Vegan, will discuss how the animal food industry is unique in depending upon such brutality that laws exist to keep consumers in the dark. Moran will share her slaughterhouse experience, explore the spiritual deficits of the status quo, and alternative approaches.
Tools, Skills and Messages Participants Will Take Home:
Pachirat: Participants will:
- Gain a concrete understanding of how industrialized animal slaughter works in the contemporary United States.
- Gain an understanding of how the work of industrialized killing is organized to fragment moral and experiential responsibility for killing.
- Reflect on the possibilities and limitations of a politics of sight, defined as concerted, organized attempts to produce social change by collapsing distance between consumers of meat and the realities of industrialized killing work.
Francione: Participants will be exposed to the idea that there is no difference between Michael Vick and the rest of us in that there is no difference sitting around a pit watching dogs fight and sitting around a summer barbecue pit roasting the corpses of animals.
About the Moderator:
Katie Pryor is NYC Regional Coordinator for Vegan Outreach. A statistician with a B.S. in Mathematics and M.S. in Environmental Sciences (May 2012), Katie works to end suffering and environmental degradation caused by factory farming.
About the Presenters:
Victoria Moran, CHHC, is the Oprah-featured author of books including The Love-Powered Diet and the new Main Street Vegan. Among the VegNews “Top 10 Vegetarian Authors,” Moran is director of Main Street Vegan Academy, training Vegan Lifestyle Coaches in NYC.
Timothy Pachirat, Assistant Professor in The New School for Social Research’s Department of Politics and Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts, is the author of Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight.
Gary Francione, Distinguished Professor Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy, Rutgers Law School, authors books and articles on animal ethics and law, including Animals as Persons and The Animal Rights Debate.