Wool, Wealth, and Walking Out: Why the Animal Industry Is Having a Terrible Week | Rising Anxieties

Marshall BioResources is big mad about Our Hen House, the Animal Agriculture Alliance thinks animal activists are secretly swimming in a billion dollars, and a UK newspaper is very upset that PETA has the audacity to care about sheep. Meanwhile, a Smithfield plant worker becomes the fourth death on the job, a rancher writes a whole essay pretending climate change isn’t why the beef herd is shrinking, and scientists are scrambling to prove animal testing can never end. Plus, Republicans are quietly making animal rights a winning political issue while Democrats are apparently too busy to notice.

• Marshall BioResources vs. Our Hen House: The animal testing company left a comment accusing the show of “dangerous disinformation” and name-dropped the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act to sound scary — which, as Mariann notes, conveniently ignores the statute’s own First Amendment protection clause.
• The “Billion-Dollar Activist Network” myth: The Animal Agriculture Alliance tallied up every penny donated to every animal cause ever and arrived at $1.07 billion, which sounds amazing until you realize most of it is money that no grassroots activist has ever seen.
• New Scientist says animal testing “cannot and will not” end: The scientific establishment is getting nervous that governments are actually talking about phasing it out, so they’re recycling the argument that curiosity justifies cruelty — an argument that would also, technically, justify experimenting on humans.
• Fourth worker death at Smithfield: Management told employees to just keep working after a colleague was killed on the job, prompting a walkout. Slaughterhouses see roughly two amputations per week in the U.S., because the danger isn’t limited to the animals.
• Animal rights as the last bipartisan issue: A Current Affairs discussion explores how Republicans are claiming animal rights as their own while Democrats haven’t caught up, making this arguably the only issue in Washington where both sides could actually agree — if anyone bothered to try.

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Join hostesses Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan on this unique and fun award-winning podcast that focuses on changing the world for animals.

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