Animal–industrial complex

Animal–industrial complex (AIC) is a concept used by activists and scholars to describe what they contend is the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of animals. The term was adapted from the "Military-industrial complex" outlined by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. Proponents of the term claim that activities described by the term differ from individual acts of animal cruelty in that they constitute institutionalized animal exploitation.

AIC is argued to include every economic activity involving animals, such as the food industry (e.g., meat, dairy, poultry, apiculture), animal testing (e.g., academic, industrial, animals in space), medicine (e.g., bile and other animal products), clothing (e.g., leather, silk, wool, fur), labor and transport (e.g., working animals, animals in war, remote control animals), tourism and entertainment (e.g., circus, zoos, blood sports, trophy hunting, animals held in captivity), selective breeding (e.g., pet industry, artificial insemination), and so forth.

Killing more than 200 billion land and aquatic animals every year, the AIC has been implicated in climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, the Holocene extinction, and the spreading of diseases from animals to humans, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

Definitions

The expression animal–industrial complex was coined by the Dutch cultural anthropologist and philosopher Barbara Noske in her 1989 book Humans and Other Animals, saying that animals "have become reduced to mere appendages of computers and machines." The expression relates the practices, organizations, and overall industry that turns animals into food and other commodities to the military–industrial complex.

Richard Twine later refined the concept, regarding it as the "partly opaque and multiple set of networks and relationships between the corporate (agricultural) sector, governments, and public and private science. With economic, cultural, social and affective dimensions it encompasses an extensive range of practices, technologies, images, identities and markets." Twine also discusses the overlap between the AIC and other industrial complexes, such as the prison–industrial complex, entertainment–industrial complex, and pharmaceutical–industrial complex. Sociologist David Nibert defines the animal–industrial complex as "a massive network that includes grain producers, ranching operations, slaughterhouse and packaging firms, fast food and chain restaurants, and the state, which he claims "has deep roots in world history."

According to Twine, the AIC essentially refers to the triple helix of influential, powerful systems that control knowledge systems about meat production, namely, the government, the corporate sphere, and the academy.

Origin and properties

Although Nibert states the origin of the animal–industrial complex can be traced back to the time when domestication of animals began, Sorenson proposes that it was only since 1945 that the complex began to grow significantly under contemporary capitalism.