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" Those working in slaughterhouses, for example, are often underpaid and overworked, lack insurance, and are required to use dangerous equipment without adequate training. Turnover and rates of injury for jobs in anymal industries are among the highest in the United States. Slaughterhouse employees are almost always poor, they are often immigrants, and they are inevitably viewed by their employers as expendable. Moreover, if we would not like to kill pigs, hens, or cattle all day long, then we should not make food choices that require others to do so. Our dietary choices determine where others work. Will our poorest laborers work in fields of green or in buildings of blood? Fieldwork is difficult, but I worked in the fields as a child, and I am very glad that I never worked in a slaughterhouse. "
― Lisa Kemmerer , Animals and World Religions
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" Oppressions are linked. We cannot free human beings without freeing cows, sows, and hens along with women and men who are systematically oppressed by those in power. Rather than seek to fight our way up the patriarchal ladder, those working for social justice need to dismantle hierarchies, and cease to exploit all those who are less powerful—even if we must give up a few culinary favorites in the process. (Those who have taken up a plantbased diet for any measure of time never want for fabulous foods. From my experience, people who discover the vast array of wonderful plant-based foods that are readily available in most of our communities never look back.) Each of us decides, over the course of our daily lives, whether we will ignore the suffering of nonhuman animals who are caught in laboratories, veal crates, circuses, and slaughterhouses, or choose to invest in compassionate, healthy alternatives . . . . We choose where our money goes, and in the process, we choose whether to boycott cruelty and support change, or melt ambiguously back into the masses. "
― Lisa Kemmerer , Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
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" Do the religious texts and exemplars support anymal welfare or anymal liberation? What do religions teach us to be with regard to anymals?
A concise formal argument, using deductive logic, rooted in three well-established premises, can help us to answer these questions about rightful relations between human beings and anymals:
Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach human beings to avoid causing harm to anymals.
Premise 2 : Contemporary industries that exploit anymals—including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries—harm anymals.
Premise 3 : Supporting industries that exploit anymals (most obviously by purchasing their products) perpetuates these industries and their harm to
anymals.
Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions indicate that human beings should avoid supporting industries that harm anymals, including food, clothing, pharmaceutical, and/or entertainment industries.
It is instructive to consider an additional deductive argument rooted in two well-established premises:
Premise 1 : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals who are suffering.
Premise 2 : Anymals suffer when they are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, or clothing industries.
Conclusion : The world’s dominant religious traditions teach people to assist and defend anymals when they are exploited in laboratories, entertainment, food, and clothing industries.
If these premises are correct—and they are supported by abundant evidence—the world’s dominant religions teach adherents
• to avoid purchasing products from industries that exploit anymals, and
• to assist and defend anymals who are exploited in laboratories and the entertainment, food, and clothing industries. "
― Lisa Kemmerer , Animals and World Religions
