Every November, roughly 46 million turkeys are killed in the United States for the sake of “American Tradition.” These are curious, socially intelligent birds capable of recognizing flock mates, forming hierarchies, and communicating with unique vocalizations, yet most are reduced to a dining table centerpiece, living just 14–20 weeks before slaughter despite a natural lifespan of 10–15 years. Their short lives, filled with fear and pain, expose the uncomfortable truth that gratitude and violence are braided together in the modern Thanksgiving ritual.
Talking about turkeys means confronting the systems—colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist—that shape their lives and deaths. Thanksgiving, too, cannot be separated from the mythologies that erase Indigenous histories, stewardship, and struggles for sovereignty. This holiday invites us to rethink what, and who, we actually celebrate, honor, and consume.
Most U.S. turkeys live in industrial sheds holding 6,000–20,000 birds and are genetically engineered to grow unnaturally heavy and fast. Their bodies become so large that many cannot stand without pain, often developing joint damage, leg deformities, and heart failure; because of these proportions, they are bred almost exclusively through forced artificial insemination, with their natural social and reproductive lives erased and relabeled as “efficiency.”
Packed tightly together, birds are subjected to “management” practices like beak trimming, desnooding, and detoeing, which remove sensitive body parts without anesthesia and can cause long-term pain, altered behavior, and difficulty eating or moving.
Most turkeys raised for Thanksgiving live on litter soaked with feces and urine under artificial lighting designed to maximize growth; their rapid weight gain often outpaces skeletal development, and many collapse from heart or lung problems. This is not tradition. It is industrial design masquerading as holiday ceremony, where bodies are treated as commodities and exploited to produce life that exists only to generate profit, encapsulating patriarchal capitalist values.
The harm of industrial turkey production does not exist in a vacuum; it is built on stolen land, exploited labor, and ecological harm —precisely the systems that ecofeminism, antispeciesism, and degrowth aim to dismantle. Barns, slaughterhouses, and feedlots sit on land taken from Indigenous peoples which are converted into monoculture grain fields, while underpaid and often migrant workers shoulder the physical risk and trauma required to keep cheap meat flowing.
Thanksgiving intensifies this logic of overproduction: ever-bigger birds, subsidized grain, and millions of pounds of turkey waste each year. In a staggering display of patriarchal capitalism’s disregard for life, it is estimated that 8 million turkeys will be thrown in the trash this Thanksgiving. In this context refusing turkey becomes more than a dietary preference; it is a small but powerful act of rejecting growth-obsessed holiday consumption in favor of justice and planetary boundaries.
And yet, as animal agriculture continues to threaten ecological stability, this year’s H5N1 bird flu outbreaks expose how fragile the turkey industry really is. Since late summer 2025, between 2 and 2.2 million turkeys have been infected or mass-killed, leaving the U.S. with its smallest turkey flock in ~40 years. Zoonotic outbreaks like H5N1 are not random accidents; they are features of a system that concentrates animals, waste, and workers in the same polluted spaces.
These mass culls—often carried out through ventilation shutdown—are presented as “biosecurity,” but they are predictable fallout of confinement, genetic uniformity, and high-density sheds, as discussed in my last post “What We Do to Nature Makes Us Sick – Literally.”
By hiding the ongoing theft and enclosure of Indigenous territories, the Thanksgiving story obscures how industrial animal agriculture depends on those same lands for feed crops, confinement facilities, and slaughter plants.
Additionally, Indigenous relationships with turkeys stretch back more than 2,000 years and offer a radically different perspective of these animals than what is normalized by Thanksgiving as its celebrated today. Historical records show that Indigenous societies in the Americas valued the birds so highly that they tamed them at least twice for companionship and participation in ceremonies.
This contrast makes clear that the way turkeys are treated today is not natural or inevitable—it is a political and economic choice.
This web of ecological and social harm reveals that struggles for land, animal liberation, and bodily autonomy are never separate. Colonial systems reshape landscapes and species to fit extractive needs, while the same logic reaches into gender and labor. What happens to the land, and what happens to the animals forced onto it, mirrors what happens to the people whose labor and autonomy are also controlled.
Ecofeminism names these shared roots and insists that none of these violences can be confronted in isolation. Instead of systems built on domination, extraction, and sacrifice zones, it asks us to move toward plant-based, low-impact, and degrowth-aligned ways of living that are grounded in care, interdependence, and respect for all beings.
Reimagining Thanksgiving through this lens means refusing to isolate animal suffering from land theft, climate chaos, and labor exploitation.
Supporting Indigenous land defenders, eating plant-based seasonal foods, and telling honest histories become interconnected acts of resistance to a system that treats life as expendable.
In place of a holiday that normalizes mistreatment, these choices move us toward traditions rooted in reciprocity, repair, and the shared right of all beings to live and thrive.
With COVID-19 cases rising again globally and health agencies monitoring potential threats from bird flu (H5N1, H9N2) and yellow fever, global organizations — including the World Health Organization (WHO) — have recognized the ongoing risk. They recently signed a new Pandemic Agreement to improve preparedness, as high-threat infectious hazards continue to increase due to animal agriculture, deforestation, urbanization, and global wildlife trade.
These risks compound: habitat destruction not only accelerates species extinctions but creates more pathways for dangerous viruses to emerge, multiply, and move into human populations.
Root Causes: How Human Activity Drives Spillover
Over 70% of new diseases in people—and nearly all pandemics, like COVID-19—originate from animal microbes also known as “zoonoses”. These spillovers occur when human activities disrupt natural barriers, usually through activities like:
Agricultural expansion. Converting natural habitats like forests and grasslands into farmland is responsible for over 30% of emerging disease events, making it one of the strongest predictors of spillover. Land use change like this causes increased contact between humans, livestock, and wildlife, which makes it easier for diseases to pass from wild animals to people (zoonotic spillover).
Intensive livestock production. Factory farms crowd genetically similar animals together in unsanitary dwellings, creating ideal conditions for pathogens to spread and evolve. Animals in factory farms frequently suffer from a variety of illnesses, and many of these conditions often go unnoticed or untreated due to the sheer number of animals and unmanageable animal-to-worker ratios. These environments substantially increase the probability that a disease will jump from animals to humans.
Deforestation. Clearing forests for agriculture, logging, or settlement destroys wildlife habitats and forces animals into closer proximity with people and livestock. More than 70% of deforestation is driven by agricultural expansion, particularly for grazing and feed crops.
Urbanization. Rapid growth of cities creates densely populated areas where diseases can spread quickly and where expanding development pushes into formerly wild spaces, increasing human contact with wildlife.
Global wildlife trade. The legal and illegal trade of wild animals transports pathogens across borders and brings stressed, diverse species into close quarters with humans, creating ideal spillover conditions.
Together, these activities fragment habitats and expose people and livestock to roughly 1.7 million undiscovered viruses, an estimated 600,000 of which could infect humans.
A World Wildlife Fund (WWF) analysis adds that pandemic risk is best understood as feedback loops: agricultural expansion, luxury wildlife demand, industrialization, and global trade all reinforce each other, making spillover not just a single event but the product of complex, interconnected systems.
Increasingly, scientists and policy leaders advocate for the “One Health” approach—a recognition that human, animal, and ecosystem health are inseparably connected. One Health calls for collaborative action across medicine, veterinary science, agriculture, and environmental protection, aiming to address the root causes of disease outbreaks and ecosystem collapse at their source rather than simply reacting to emergencies.
These root causes mirror the forces behind climate change and global inequality: weak regulation, extractive industries, and profit-driven systems that degrade the very ecosystems acting as our first line of defense.
Animal Agriculture: A Major Driver of Climate Breakdown and Pandemic Risk
Animal agriculture sits at the center of both ecological disruption and disease emergence, making it one of the most significant contributors to pandemic risk.
Livestock farming is responsible for 12–20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, produces 37% of human-caused methane, and drives widespread deforestation, water contamination, and biodiversity loss. As global meat consumption rises, the demand for land and feed crops intensifies, pushing agricultural expansion deeper into natural habitats.
Industrial livestock operations also create ideal conditions for infectious disease evolution. Crowded, genetically similar animals enable viruses to spread rapidly and mutate. Many zoonotic pathogens — including avian and swine influenza and antibiotic-resistant bacteria — originated in high-density livestock systems. Live animal transport and global supply chains further amplify transmission risk, moving pathogens across borders at rapid speed.
The ongoing surge in bird flu outbreaks illustrates these risks: in 2025, millions of chickens and turkeys in North America have been killed to contain infection as H5N1 spreads rapidly in crowded factory farms, which serve as hotspots for viral mutation and transmission. When avian flu is detected in a flock, authorities typically employ mass culling methods—such as gassing or suffocation—which kills every bird in the shed to halt the disease’s spread. This process highlights the normalization of suffering and waste in our food systems.
Research consistently shows that transitioning toward plant-based food systems would reduce emissions, restore ecosystems, and significantly lower the risk of emerging pandemics.
Structural Causes: Capitalism, Inequality, and Rising Risk
Large-scale deforestation, industrial agriculture, and wildlife commodification are often financed and directed by high-consuming nations and powerful multinational corporations like JBS and Walmart. These actors profit from activities that degrade ecosystems, while the resulting disease and environmental risks are displaced onto communities.
In a growth-focused global economy, capital flows into industries such as factory farming, fossil fuel extraction, mining, and wildlife trade — sectors that depend on cheap land, weak environmental regulation, and low-cost labor. As these industries expand into biodiversity-rich regions, they fragment ecosystems, displace wildlife, and intensify opportunities for spillover. Global supply chains built for speed and efficiency further entrench this dynamic by externalizing environmental and health costs onto exploited nations and communities.
The very industries that degrade ecosystems and compromise community health channel their profits to corporations and wealthy nations, widening the gap between those who bear the consequences and those who reap the rewards.
Many of the world’s spillover “hotspots” lie in tropical regions managed or inhabited by Indigenous and rural communities who often lack the political power to resist industrial expansion by dominant nations. As a result, these communities face polluted waterways, degraded land, inadequate health infrastructure, and increased exposure to zoonotic disease. When outbreaks occur, indigenous and rural communities experience disproportionate illness, loss of income, and long-term social disruption. Meanwhile, high-consuming nations continue to benefit from exploitation and the availability of cheap commodities, while displacing the risks elsewhere.
The WWF highlights that protecting Indigenous land rights, supporting community-led resource management, and ensuring equitable participation in conservation are not simply justice issues—they are frontline strategies for pandemic prevention. Indigenous management consistently leads to better conservation outcomes, healthier forests, and—by extension—lower pandemic risk.
Calls for pandemic justice echo those of the climate justice movement: those who benefit most from ecological destruction must bear the greatest responsibility for prevention, restoration, and reparative action.
How U.S. Policy Has Increased Vulnerability
If we learned anything from COVID-19 its that reactionary approaches to pandemics are slow, expensive, and inadequate to the scale of the threat (WHO). Instead, prevention must start with transforming the policies that drive ecosystem disruption.
However, recent U.S. policy decisions under the Trump administration have amplified vulnerability to disease emergence and environmental harm simultaneously.
For example, despite warnings from experts about the risk of foot-and-mouth disease in Argentinian cattle, the Trump administration moved forward with policies to expand beef imports from Argentina, a decision that raises the risk of introducing animal diseases into U.S. herds and exemplifies the prioritization of economic and trade interests over ecological and public health safety.
Additionally, there have been significant cuts and delays to federal research funding for emerging infectious diseases, undermining efforts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies to develop new diagnostics, vaccines, and treatments, and diminishing the nation’s ability to monitor and respond to public health threats.
Finally, the U.S. withdrawal from the (WHO) disrupted global data sharing and international public health collaboration, creating funding gaps in vital programs, limiting U.S. influence over international health policy, and reducing coordination on pandemic preparedness with global partners..
These decisions mirror broader climate deregulation: short-term economic gains for those in power, long-term social, health and environmental risks for everyone else.
Plant Based Diets as Resistance
When governments prioritize corporate interests over ecological and public health, it is easy to feel powerless. Yet individual choices — especially the ways we eat and where we put our dollars — offer a powerful form of resistance. A plant-based diet directly withdraws support from the industries most responsible for both climate instability and pandemic risk.
A plant-based diet reduces risk across multiple systems:
Lower pandemic risk: Reducing dependence on factory farming — one of the primary incubators of zoonotic disease — lowers the conditions that enable pathogens to spill over into human populations. Studies show that people eating primarily plant-based diets experience lower COVID-19 severity and improved immune outcomes.
Climate mitigation: Plant-based diets reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 50%, while also decreasing water use, pollution, and resource depletion.
Biodiversity protection: Less demand for meat slows deforestation, protects wildlife habitats, and reduces landscape fragmentation — one of the strongest predictors of zoonotic spillover.
Individual dietary choices can activate our collective power. Even small shifts — like choosing plant-based meals a few times per week — reduce pressure on natural habitats and act as a form of climate care.
International health bodies like WHO, IPBES, and the One Health High-Level Expert Panel consistently affirm that addressing pandemic risk requires protecting ecosystems, reducing destructive land use, and prioritizing community well-being over extractive growth.
Conclusion
While plant-based diets strengthen pandemic and climate resilience at an individual level, systemic transformation is needed to address climate and pandemic risk on a global scale.
The most effective pandemic mitigation strategies cited from IPBES to WHO, BMJ, and global One Health networks include:
Nature-first prevention: Restoring forests, ending deforestation, and protecting biodiversity hotspots maintain the ecological stability that prevents spillover. Healthy ecosystems act as protective shields against emerging infectious diseases.
Integrated One Health policies: Aligning human, animal, and environmental health strengthens surveillance, early detection, and coordinated responses across sectors. The One Health model is now widely recognized as essential for global pandemic preparedness.
Community-led conservation: Indigenous and frontline communities consistently achieve stronger conservation outcomes through place-based knowledge, stewardship, and long-term relationships with land. Their leadership protects biodiversity while strengthening social resilience.
Redirecting funding toward prevention: Investing billions annually in early-warning systems, ecological restoration, and public health infrastructure breaks the costly cycle of reactive crisis management. Prevention is more effective, equitable, and sustainable than emergency response.
These solutions reflect the growing alignment between climate justice and pandemic prevention frameworks. Both demand a shift away from extractive, profit-driven models of growth and promote moving toward long-term ecological stability, community well-being, and global solidarity.
Climate care is pandemic prevention. Biodiversity is a protective shield that stabilizes the climate, regulates ecosystems, and buffers humanity from disease. When we dismantle that shield, the consequences cascade through every aspect of life.
The latest evidence, echoed by WWF, makes clear: The solutions that prevent pandemics are the same ones that restore justice and planetary health— restoring ecosystems, reducing reliance on animal agriculture, supporting Indigenous leadership, and enacting policies that prioritize people and the planet.
Have you ever associated going vegan with the fear of missing out on vital nutrients? You’re not alone—this myth has been circulating for years. But science, insights into propaganda used by the meat industry, and my personal journey—tell a very different story.
Typical American diets are often heavy in processed meats and low in fiber. In contrast, vegans get significantly more micronutrients like fiber, vitamins C and E, and minerals such as magnesium. These nutrients are vital in supporting heart health, immune function, and overall wellness. Contrary to popular belief, plant-based eaters consistently meet or exceed recommended protein intakes through legumes, tofu, tempeh, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. With variety, all essential amino acids are covered.
Meanwhile, omnivorous diets can ironically lack many of these key micronutrients, despite providing ample protein and calories.
Since I began pursuing strength training and body composition goals on a vegan diet—alongside other active hobbies like dancing and hiking—I’ve experienced firsthand how plant-based nutrition fuels athletic performance and aesthetic goals.
My personal experience reflects what the science shows: a well-planned vegan diet provides all the essential nutrients needed for muscle growth, sustained energy, and recovery.
What’s the Difference Between Micronutrients and Macronutrients?
Understanding nutrition is like maintaining a car—you need both fuel and sparts to keep it running.
Macronutrients are your fuel: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Carbs provide quick energy, proteins build and repair tissue, and fats store energy and support vital functions.
Micronutrients—vitamins and minerals—are like the spark plugs and wiring. You need them in small amounts, but they’re essential for metabolism, immunity, brain function, and bone health. Without them, even the best “fuel” can’t keep the system running smoothly.
How Vegan Diets Boost Health
A vegan diet centered around whole foods like fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds is naturally packed with essential micronutrients. These include vitamins C and E, magnesium, potassium, zinc, copper, and antioxidants that help your body run clean and efficiently.
Collagen Production
Many of these nutrients support collagen production, which maintains healthy skin, joints, and connective tissue. Vitamin C stabilizes collagen fibers, zinc and copper support its synthesis, and vitamins A and E aid in cell renewal and protect skin structures. This profile not only bolsters heart health and digestion but also helps keep skin strong and youthful.
Muscle Growth and Function
Micronutrients play crucial roles in muscle function. Calcium triggers muscle contractions, potassium helps muscles relax and prevents cramps, and magnesium supports energy metabolism.
Great plant-based sources include:
Calcium: fortified plant milks, tofu, kale, bok choy
Iron and B vitamins (B1, B6, B12, folate) are essential for delivering oxygen and energy to muscles. Iron transports oxygen, while B vitamins convert food into energy. Find these in lentils, chickpeas, quinoa, spinach, pumpkin seeds, whole grains, legumes, nutritional yeast, and dark leafy greens.
Vitamins C and E and minerals like zinc aid post-exercise recovery and reduce oxidative stress. Sources include citrus fruits, strawberries, bell peppers, broccoli (for C), nuts, seeds, spinach (for E), and beans, lentils, and seeds (for zinc).
Vitamin D and zinc also support immune health and hormonal balance—key for consistent training and recovery. Vitamin D can be found in fortified plant milks, sun-exposed mushrooms, and supplements as needed.
In my experience, I’ve had more energy to pursue multiple sports—including weightlifting, dance, and hiking—on a plant-based diet than I did on an omnivorous one. Although I tracked my macronutrients more rigorously on an omnivorous diet, I’ve found it easier to reach my strength, stamina, and aesthetic goals by prioritizing nutrient-dense, plant-based foods. I attribute this to getting adequate macronutrients alongside a significantly higher intake of micronutrients. The boost in vitamins and minerals has also enhanced my focus throughout the day.
What About B12?
Contrary to popular belief, meat itself does not naturally contain high levels of B vitamins; rather, it’s produced by microbes and added to animal feed in industrial farming. This means most people consuming meat get B12 that was supplemented earlier in the food chain.
Fortified foods such as nutritional yeast provide a direct, reliable source for vegans.
Increased Immunity
Since going vegan, I rarely get sick and recover quickly when I do. I feel more energized and no longer experience the frequent colds I used to. Whether it’s due to increased vitamin C, zinc, antioxidants, or overall nutrient density, the shift has been profound.
And the data backs it up: A 2021 study in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health found that people on plant-based diets had a 73% lower risk of moderate-to-severe COVID-19. Researchers attributed this to higher intakes of vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber, which reduce inflammation and boost immune defenses.
How Meat Industry Propaganda Fuels Nutrient Myths and Greenwashing
The enduring myth that vegan diets are nutritionally insufficient is not merely a misunderstanding—it is actively propagated and reinforced by coordinated marketing and lobbying campaigns funded by the meat industry.
This industry exploits a fundamental human instinct: the desire to protect our health and well-being.
By weaponizing legitimate health concerns, the meat sector promotes the narrative that meat is essential for strength, vitality, and overall wellness.
Each year, the meat industry deploys powerful advertisements that positions meat as the primary or exclusive source of vital nutrients such as protein and B vitamins. These campaigns use cultural symbols, linking meat consumption with masculinity, patriotism, tradition, and cultural identity.
Ironically, many nutrients long attributed to meat actually come from supplements administered to animals before slaughter, rather than naturally occurring in the meat itself—as noted above regarding vitamin B12.
Marketing tactics target young demographics and schools by funding educational materials that vilify plant-based alternatives as unnatural or overly processed.
Simultaneously, the industry promotes “net zero” sustainability pledges that omit critical emissions sources like deforestation linked to feed crop production, misleading the public regarding meat’s true environmental costs.
Beyond traditional advertisements, the meat industry has invested tens of millions of dollars into orchestrated misinformation and disinformation campaigns designed to obstruct transitions toward plant-based diets and challenge studies advocating for reduced meat consumption for human and planetary health. This includes providing funding to scholars, research centers, and public relations firms that produce and disseminate messaging aimed at undermining scientific consensus on the environmental and health impacts of meat consumption. For instance, the University of California Davis’s CLEAR Center has received nearly $12.5 million in meat industry funding to challenge studies advocating for reduced meat consumption and to lead campaigns such as #yes2meat.
In 2023 alone, the U.S. meat industry spent over $10 million on political contributions and lobbying. For example, Tyson Foods spent about $1.67 million on federal lobbying in the 2023-2024 cycle; WH Group spent $1.04 million; JBS, $440,000; and the North American Meat Institute, $186,767.
This intensified financial clout coincides with rising scrutiny of meat’s environmental and health impacts, as well as a cultural surge in traditional norms linking meat and dairy consumption to masculinity.
These campaigns create confusion. Many people wrongly believe beef is sustainable through inaccurate sustainability pledges and that plant-based diets are nutritionally lacking. Such misinformation is used to protect industry profits and delay the urgently needed policy reforms to reduce emissions and safeguard public health.
Recognizing this complex propaganda ecosystem is essential to understanding why nutrient deficiency myths persist and empowers people to make informed, health-conscious, and sustainable choices.
Vegan Diets Are Better for the Planet—And That Supports Our Health
Eating plant-based doesn’t just benefit your body—it helps regenerate the systems that sustain all life on Earth. Compared to animal-heavy diets, plant-based eating uses far less land, water, and energy while slashing greenhouse gas emissions.
Studies from Oxford and Harvard show that shifting to plant-based diets can reduce environmental impact by up to 75%, while also lowering risks for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.
This shift reduces environmental pressures and restores ecosystems, which in turn provide cleaner air, purer water, and greater climate stability—directly benefiting human health.
It’s a powerful feedback loop: eating plants helps protect ecosystems, and thriving ecosystems support human health in return.
How Plant-Based Diets Restore Natural Systems
Water Cycle Support: Switching to plant-based diets could significantly decrease water use on a global scale. When less water is needed for crops, and less pollution enters rivers, this allows aquifers to recharge, rivers to flow, and ecosystems to recover.
Carbon Cycle and Climate Regulation: Vegan diets could reduce food-related emissions by up to 86% by retiring grazing land and monoculture feed crops to make space for forests and grasslands to regrow. This helps to improve air quality and restore carbon sinks.
Healthy Ecosystems = Healthy Humans: Intact ecosystems filter air and water, regulate temperature, prevent erosion, pollinate crops, and buffer natural disasters. These services reduce disease, support food security, and strengthen community resilience.
Fuel Your Body and the Planet with Plants
Vegan diets deliver both the robust fuel (macronutrients) and essential parts (micronutrients) your body needs—while caring for the Earth. They bust the nutrient deficiency myth by offering a rich spectrum of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants to support muscle performance, collagen production, immunity, and vitality.
By choosing plants, you’re efficiently fueling your body, fine-tuning your health, and creating a better world for everyone. I’ve felt this transformation in my own energy, immunity, and strength—and science backs it up.
Visiting Luvin Arms Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit refuge for farmed animals, filled me with a complex concoction of emotions including joy, grief, sorrow, and hope. Each animal had a name, a story, a unique personality, and a desire to live. Often, their survival came down to just one person having the courage to speak up, and choose compassion over indifference.
Photo of Lily the pig during my visit to Luvin Arms, taken July 2025
I met Maybell, a cow who had once served the tormenting role of a “Judas cow” in which one cow is used to lead others to slaughter. Maybell had carried out this tormenting task for years until the day it was meant to be her turn. The farmer’s wife, who had formed a unique bond with her, couldn’t go through with it. In an act of rare mercy, she arranged for Maybell to live out her life at Luvin Arms instead.
Other cows had been saved by a truck driver who was transporting calves to be slaughtered for veal. There is an expectation that some calves will die en route, therefore it is common in the veal industry to overload transport cars in order to ensure that the correct number of calves will be slaughtered each day. On this particular trip, all the calves survived which meant that some were considered “extra.” They “excess” calves were scheduled to be returned to the farm, only to be slaughtered later. Unable to stomach their inevitable fate, the driver delivered the “excess” calves to Luvin Arms instead. That single act of conscience changed their lives forever.
As I walked through the sanctuary, I was struck by the stark contrast between the animals’ traumatic pasts and the peaceful lives they now live. Joy welled up in me as I watched pigs play together in sunflower fields and flop onto their sides at my feet, inviting belly rubs just like my dog does at home. It was incredible to witness their capacity to trust and love after surviving the systemic cruelty and abuse of factory farms. At the same time, I felt a deep sorrow for the countless animals who will never get to live the life they deserve.
Lily and Lizzie: The Right to Rescue in Action
Among the many powerful rescue stories I learned, Lily and Lizzie’s particularly stuck out due to their involvement in the historic Smithfield Trial. These two piglets were saved from one of the largest factory farms in the U.S., a facility run by Smithfield Foods in Utah.
In 2017, activists from Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) entered the farm and documented horrifying conditions. They found pigs in metal gestation crates unable to turn around, dead and dying piglets on the floor, and sick animals left without care. Lily and Lizzie were two of the weakest. Rather than leave them behind, the activists carried them out and ended up saving their lives.
This act of “open rescue” is a cornerstone of the animal rights movement. It involves openly entering facilities, documenting conditions, and rescuing animals who would otherwise suffer or die. Activists argue that animals in distress deserve the same emergency protections as humans and pets—and that compassion should override property claims when suffering is involved.
The defense didn’t just highlight animal suffering—it challenged the very idea that these lives could be reduced to property. These persuasive arguments even lead some jurors to make personal changes, such as refusing to eat ham after the trial.
Surveilled Like Criminals: The FBI and Industry Tactics
What came next was chilling. After the rescue, the FBI launched a multi-state search for Lily and Lizzie. They raided two animal sanctuaries—including Luvin Arms—looking for the piglets. They even took ear clippings, without anesthesia, from the pigs to test DNA in an attempt to prove which animals had been “stolen” from Smithfield.
Why would the FBI devote resources to chasing two sick piglets? The answer lies in the growing alliance between law enforcement and the meat industry.
A 2023 exposé by Wired revealed that the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA)—a powerful industry group—worked directly with the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate to surveil nonviolent animal rights activists like those with DxE. Industry-aligned spies infiltrated activist events, secretly recording and photographing people, then passed intelligence to the FBI. One undercover informant even provided details of group chats, organizing meetings, and travel plans.
The FBI created a dedicated email tip line for industry insiders to report animal activists. Internal documents showed that factory farm operators were encouraged to label activists as potential “bioterror” threats—even when no violence or sabotage occurred.
This isn’t new. Since the early 2000s, federal agencies have labeled eco- and animal rights groups as domestic terrorism threats. Under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) peaceful civil disobedience—such as rescuing animals or documenting abuse—can be prosecuted as terrorism. This legal overreach is part of a larger campaign to silence dissent and criminalize compassion.
Meanwhile, the actual conditions in factory farms, including rampant untreated disease, pollution, and systemic cruelty, continue without consequence.
Why Animal Sanctuaries Matter
Sanctuaries like Luvin Arms are more than places of refuge. They are acts of resistance.
Animal sanctuaries give animals the chance to rebuild trust and learn how to receive affection after being abused. They allow animals to experience life through play, curiosity, and meaningful bonds—experiences they would never have while confined in cages.
Lily and Lizzie found a forever home at Luvin Arms. Lily, who I got to spend more time with during my visit, became a sanctuary ambassador. She is playful, sweet, and deeply affectionate. She formed loving relationships with her pig family and the people who cared for her, showing every visitor what pigs are capable of when given a chance to live their lives freely and fully. She is living proof of a truth the industry hides: pigs are emotionally complex, intelligent, and deserving of care.
Animal sanctuaries also challenge the dominant view that animals exist for human use. They serve as living arguments against speciesism, the belief that lives of certain species inherently matter more than others. Every rescue challenges a system that commodifies life. Every animal is someone, not something.
The Power of Compassion
If you ever doubt that one person can make a difference, remember Maybell’s rescuer. Remember the truck driver who rerouted calves to sanctuary. Remember the activists who risked prison so Lily and Lizzie could live. Lives were saved because someone refused to look away.
Animal lives matter. And the right to rescue reminds us that sometimes, doing the right thing means breaking the rules, because rules are often written to protect cruelty—not compassion.
If you feel moved by the idea of open rescue, I encourage you to visit the Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) website where there are a number of opportunities to support this kind of work or donate.
Since the 1990s, evidence supporting animal sentience has increased tenfold, demonstrating that animals possess the capacity for subjective experiences like pleasure and pain—states previously believed beyond their reach. This surge in evidence has amplified the animal rights movement, spotlighting the injustices prevalent in animal agriculture, research, testing, and challenging normalized societal views of animals.
Photo by Caroline S.
A pivotal moment in this revolution was the establishment of Animal Sentience in 2015. This academic journal became the first to exclusively study the capacity of nonhuman animals to feel and think. By integrating ethics, neuroscience, animal behavior, and welfare science, Animal Sentience has provided a centralized, peer-reviewed platform for interdisciplinary research, marking formal recognition of animal sentience as a legitimate scientific field.
This milestone followed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (2012), which affirmed that many nonhuman animals possess neurological substrates for consciousness.
By legitimizing research on subjective experiences in animals, Animal Sentience challenged behaviorist paradigms that had dominated much of the 20th century.
The journal’s influence extends to policy, with its research supporting legal protections for species like cephalopods and decapods in the EU and UK. The incorporation of animal sentience into UK law through the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 demonstrates growing societal acknowledgment of animals’ capacity for suffering, supporting calls to end practices like factory farming and animal testing.
While these legal protections have helped improve animal welfare and awareness of animal rights, there is still much work to be done to implement the findings of the animal sentience revolution into industry and society.
Moreover, Animal Sentience has strengthened ethical arguments against practices like factory farming and animal research by highlighting evidence of sentience across diverse taxa.
In essence, Animal Sentience has played a critical role in advancing scientific understanding, fostered interdisciplinary collaboration, influenced policy changes, and shifted societal attitudes toward recognizing animals as sentient beings deserving moral consideration.
The New York Declaration challenges paradigms in ethics, neuroscience, and societal norms. It explicitly rejects the assumption that consciousness requires human-like brain structures and the idea of human exceptionalism in understanding animal consciousness.
As the Declaration states, “The architecture for consciousness in other animals may look completely different than in humans… It is irresponsible to ignore [this] in decisions affecting animals.”
By challenging anthropocentric biases and recognizing consciousness as a trait shared across diverse species with varying neural architectures, the New York Declaration provides a framework for integrating scientific findings into ethical decision-making, urging society to reevaluate its treatment of animals in agriculture, research, and other industries.
The declaration marks a pivotal moment in the science of animal minds by combining empirical evidence with moral responsibility, pushing for systemic changes in how humans interact with nonhuman animals.
It also emphasizes that absolute certainty about consciousness is not required to take ethical precautions, advocating instead for a precautionary principle in decision-making.
If there is even a realistic possibility that an animal can suffer or experience harm, policymakers should consider this when crafting laws and regulations. By assuming consciousness, we can create better animal welfare practices and ensure that no sentient beings are harmed.
If consciousness isn’t human-specific, speciesist hierarchies (e.g., prioritizing mammals over fish) become untenable. This realization highlights the fact that speciesism is a construct, and thus our understanding of speciesism is shaped by human perception and cultural systems, rather than being an objective, universally fixed reality.
Building on this foundation, the ASENT Project (2019-2024) has challenged binary classifications of sentience by proposing a multidimensional framework that considers valence (pleasure/pain), arousal (intensity), self-awareness, and social awareness across species.
By rejecting binary thinking, ASENT helps us understand that sentience isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s not just about whether an animal can feel pain – it’s also about how deeply they experience the world around them. Are they self-aware? Can they form social bonds? And what’s the emotional intensity behind their experiences?
ASENT’s spectrum model widens our definition of sentience, allowing for what is classically considered partial evidence (e.g., chickens showing empathy) to warrant ethical safeguards.
The ASENT framework emphasizes taking preventative action when there is a threat of harm by stating that “Uncertainty about sentience does not justify inaction.”
These milestones highlight a critical point: sentience should not be a prerequisite for welfare.
Because our understanding of sentience is largely based on the human experience, there is a high likelihood that animal consciousness differs from our own in ways we may not fully comprehend, which is further complicated by humans’ incomplete understanding of our own species’ consciousness.
Animals that have not been proven sentient are labeled as non-sentient until proven otherwise, leading to the risk of inflicting harm on sentient beings.
As science evolves, more species are recognized as sentient, underscoring the need to assume sentience until proven otherwise and to grant welfare to all species based on their intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of animals refers to the idea that animals have inherent worth, independent of their usefulness or value to humans, meaning their lives are valuable in and of themselves.
Additionally, breakthroughs in neuroscience and ethology show that animals previously thought incapable of feeling pain—such as crustaceans and cephalopods—are indeed sentient. This evidence dismantles arguments justifying their use in food and research industries and further supports the argument to assume consciousness until proven otherwise.
The utilitarian classifications of living organisms used in the speciesist hierarchy lays the foundation for humans to justify inflicting harm on each other based on perceived traits of moral or performance superiority.
Speciesism places Homo sapiens at the top of a hierarchy that is used to justify sacrificing other animals. Harmful practices and ideas about animals that are deprioritized in the speciesist hierarchy are used to rationalize colonial practices and violence towards groups of people.
Speciesism allows certain animals to be exploited and treated as commodities to accommodate human needs and desires, while other animals with the same capacity to experience emotion can be considered family.
In 1999, the Treaty of Amsterdam went into force, granting animals official recognition as sentient beings in the EU, which demonstrates widespread acceptance of animal sentience. However, the practices used in animal agriculture and animal testing disregard the fact that animals such as cows, pigs, chickens, and rats are capable of experiencing a significant range of emotions, including fear, stress, pain, social bonds, joy, empathy and affection. This juxtaposition highlights a significant level of cognitive dissonance associated with the production and consumption of animal products as well as products tested on animals.
Despite our knowledge of their ability to experience subjective states, chickens, pigs, and cows are viewed as commodities in society, raised simply for consumption without deliberation on their wellbeing.
In industrialized agriculture, these animals are confined in cramped, unsanitary conditions to maximize production, leading to suffering and disease. Calves are separated from their mothers within a few hours of birth and male piglets are castrated without anesthesia. However, the normalization of speciesism in society enables people to turn a blind eye to the 10 billion animals that are killed on factory farms in the USA annually and their suffering.
Humans must challenge our idea of superiority in the animal kingdom, recognizing that we are animals too. It is unjust to engage with practices such as laboratory testing, animal agriculture, and the destruction of natural habitats due to the distress and pain these practices inflict on innocent, sentient beings in addition to the harm they inflict on the Earth.
Vegan ethics align with the scientific consensus on animal consciousness and the urgency of staying within planetary boundaries.
The convergence of animal sentience science, climate urgency, and planetary boundary breaches creates a compelling ethical and ecological case for transitioning to veganism in the U.S. Here’s how these elements interconnect:
“Humane Slaughter” is an oxymoron, as the Humane Slaughter Act excludes 9.7 billion chickens and turkeys slaughtered annually, allowing live-shackling and ineffective stunning. Even for covered species, 16% of cows are ineffectively stunned during slaughter due to rushed bolt-gun procedures resulting in repetitive stunning or slaughter while conscious. Additionally, there are countless allegations of abuse, violations, and deceptive practices against farms that hold humane farming certifications. For example, investigations into Plainville Farms, a Global Animal Partnership certified facility, revealed workers kicking, beating, and throwing turkeys, with sick and injured birds left untreated. Animal Welfare Certified Farms have been found guilty of animal abuse, including workers kicking birds and forcing screaming pigs into gas chambers.
The New York Declaration urges avoiding harm where consciousness is a “realistic possibility.” Given ASENT’s evidence, this includes all vertebrates and most invertebrates used in agriculture. The precautionary principle dictates that uncertainty about sentience does not justify inaction. Veganism offers a solution, reducing suffering by eliminating demand for animal products, which directly reduces slaughter rates, and mitigates climate change by shifting to plant-based diets, potentially cutting agricultural emissions by 49% and land use by 76%.
Rejecting speciesism is not only a moral choice but also crucial for the planet’s survival.
Developments in animal sentience science confirm that animals experience subjective states such as pain, fear, empathy, and pleasure, making their exploitation morally indefensible.
Sentience-based ethics challenge speciesism by dismantling the hierarchy that places human interests above those of non-human animals.
Evidence of animal cognition, such as playful behaviors in bees and problem-solving in octopuses, underscores the ability of science to evolve overtime and the need to assume consciousness in order to ensure that no sentient beings are harmed.
These scientific advancements strengthen the moral argument for veganism by revealing the inherent suffering and exploitation in animal agriculture, advocating for systemic change in research, societal norms, and practices. Moreover, they challenge anthropocentrism by showing that consciousness is not uniquely human nor reliant on familiar neural structures. We must recognize that sentience is a spectrum with diverse evolutionary origins, and revise animal welfare laws, research ethics, food systems, and our relationship with nonhuman life.
