Alene Anello is an animal law attorney and the founder of Legal Impact for Chickens. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she previously worked at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, The Good Food Institute, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

Q: Tell us about chickens. Why are they your focus?

Anello:  Chickens are sensitive, intelligent animals. They develop friendships with one another, and can even befriend people. These birds feel pain just like a cat or a dog. In sanctuaries or in the wild, chickens reveal their curious, unique, strong, and loving personalities. They develop social hierarchies and befriend both people and one another. They recognize patterns and do other complex cognitive tasks.  And they deserve to be treated with kindness.

Yet in modern America, chickens suffer greatly—and in huge numbers. U.S. companies raise and slaughter nine billion chickens each year. That’s more than the entire population of humans on the planet. Because chickens are so small, it takes about 200 chickens to produce the amount of meat that comes from one cow. Partly as a result of this, nine out of every ten land animals farmed nationwide is a chicken. And 99.9% of U.S. chickens live on factory farms. 

Chickens raised on factory farms for ...

The North American Animal Liberation Press Office communicates on behalf of underground activists who perform animal rescue operations. In the last few years, there have been a number of actions to liberate mink from mink farms, which have resulted in tens of thousands of mink being set free. The NAALPO answered questions on behalf of the mink liberators. 

Q: Tell us about mink and the fur trade. Why have mink farms been singled out by those who want to liberate animals?

A: From killing more than 5 million defenseless fur-bearing animals per year, to “only” 783,000 last year, fur profiteers are under severe pressure to cease their morally-defunct trade. Because it is so vulnerable, the industry is being selectively and heavily targeted by organizations such as Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT).

Mink on fur farms suffer from the moment they are born until the moment they die. They spend their entire lives trapped in tiny wire cages, crammed by the thousands into squalid sheds, unable to take more than a few steps in any direction. As wild animals, they are deprived of every natural act that is ...

How Much Can a Banana Cost? 

A price, such as a rent or wage, that remains

fixed, recurring and agreed on for a long

period of time eventually becomes a ghost. 

The agreed upon amount no longer exists in any

real way even as your boss still pays the number.

The number is no longer the same. Each time you pay

your landlord the number, the number invisibly

changes, becomes less the number you stated

when you started paying. Just stating your wage,

after a year or two, becomes a kind of nostalgia,

a lie you tell yourself about the distance

between yourself and the past. Worse, 

the number becomes a lie the market

tells you about the distance between

yourself and the past. Worse, the real

marker between yourself and the past;

the dead; have no mention in this equation, 

just the infinitesimal and invisibly mounting

lied about number. The best part; eventually 

you cannot understand any number in the world, 

because your frame of reference for the cost of

an hour or a day or fifteen hundred square feet is twenty

years ago, two thousand miles away, and one day 

you find yourself ...

Christopher Eubanks is a social justice advocate, public speaker, and nonprofit director dedicated to doing advocacy work to promote vegan ethics. He is the founder of Apex Advocacy and helped to co-organize Atlanta’s first ever animal rights march. We spoke to him about his work organizing animal welfare activists of color and fighting both white supremacy and animal exploitation at the same time. 

Q: You are trying to specifically focus on building a community of BIPOC animal activists. Do you think animal welfare activism has had a "whiteness" problem and why is that?

Eubanks: I think the world largely operates under a white supremacist culture and it impacts much of our everyday lives. When we look at who controls the majority of the world’s wealth, who’s in positions of power in the most powerful countries, who has access to the best healthcare, etc., it leans toward the benefit of cis white males, which empowers white supremacy. So I think animal welfare, much like most aspects of our society, falls under the larger umbrella of being a product of white supremacy.

There are incredible people of color around the world doing advocacy and amazing organizations not led by white people doing great work for animal welfare. But the general landscape of the animal welfare space is shaped by the rules of white supremacy, which impacts what types of work get funded, who gets access to resources, ...

Investigative journalist Will Potter is the author of Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth, from Farm to Fable, which illuminates the “frightening truth about animal agriculture’s role in accelerating climate collapse” and “shows how the authoritarian measures being taken to maintain control over this key aspect of the global food supply chain are directly linked to the proliferation and empowerment of far-right militias.”  

Q: What aspects of our food system are kept hidden from public view?

Potter: Factory farming is dependent on secrecy. This is how 99 percent of animal products reach American consumers—nearly 10 billion animals raised for food in the United States every year. Over the last 100 years, consumers have grown increasingly removed from farms and food. When we need something, we just go to the grocery store. Most people are unaware of the radical changes in the food system, and have never witnessed the standard industry practices of factory farms: animals crammed by the tens of thousands into windowless sheds, mutilated without pain relief, or slaughtered at breakneck line speeds. But it’s not just animal suffering that’s concealed. ...

Monica Chen is the executive director of the New Roots Institute, which educates high school and college students on the impacts of factory farming and supports them as they become advocates for a just and sustainable food system.  

Q: You’re focused on educating young people about factory farming. What have you found out about what works?

Chen:  Effectively meeting students where they are means asking questions, listening, and leading with curiosity rather than judgment. Our fellows inspire their peers to think critically about the connections between industrial animal agriculture and key issues that affect all of us, like climate change, human rights, and public health. When students can explore their own perspectives and connect the topic to issues they already care about, we see deeper engagement and lasting interest.

Humor is essential, and our “Rotten Truth” series is a testament to that! Also, facts alone are not enough. Facts land best when they are clear, credible, and paired with visuals and stories that make them stick. 

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Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla of the Shrimp Welfare Project argues that when we think about animal cruelty, we need to think about shrimp. “Shrimp?!” you may ask. Yes, shrimp. Let’s let him make the case. We asked Andrés to explain as succinctly as possible why he thinks we need to expand our perspective, looking not just at pigs, cows, and chickens, but at these humble crustaceans.

Q: What’s the one-sentence case for caring about shrimp?

Zorrilla:   Shrimps make up the largest population of farmed animals, they feel pain, their suffering is widespread yet preventable, and small changes can improve billions of lives each year.

Q: Alright, let’s break that down a bit.