Just like many today defend animal agriculture as an economic necessity, people once argued that slavery was essential to the survival of the nation. Many called or call in the bible to defend the use of certain humans as slaves, or animals as food. Some were saying that slavery was for the benefit of the enslaved, who would be worse off on their own. Similarly, defenders of the present day food system claim that animals have it better in factory farms than in the wild.
TOBIAS LEENAERT: In the very impressive Legacy Museum in Montgomery (AL), among the many testimonials from formerly enslaved people, it reads: “The trader bought me and the calf together for five hundred and thirty dollars”. Part of the Legacy Museum is a monument to the four thousand documented cases of lynchings that happened after emancipation. Often these lynchings were public spectacles, where photos or postcards of the event were sold as souvenirs. A reminder of bloodsports and trophy hunting with animals today…
There are also very obvious parallels in the way people – now or then – denied and excused these practices, and actively resisted change. Just like many today defend animal agriculture as an economic necessity, for instance, people once argued that slavery was essential to the survival of the nation. Many called or call in the bible to defend the use of certain humans as slaves, or animals as food. Some were saying that slavery was for the benefit of the enslaved, who would be worse off on their own.
Similarly, defenders of the present day food system claim that animals have it better in factory farms than in the wild. There’s the idea that slavery and eating animals are natural and that it’s always been done, or that slaves or animals are meant to be used. There are the legal arguments: slaves and animals are property, and property can be used however the owner sees fit, and shouldn’t be interfered with. In both the case of human and animal exploitation, the people involved resent being morally judged (slavery became an actual part of the identity of the South).
Apart from denial and apologizing, there is also, in both cases, active resistance from vested interests. Just like the animal industry is doing its best to stop progress and undermine the growth of plant-based, slaveholders were actively trying to maintain the status quo. Personally, I think it’s one thing not to go along with progress, but quite another to proactively sabotage it. As British member of parliament Thomas Fowell Buxton wrote: “a war against a people struggling for their freedom and their rights, would be the falsest position in which it was possible for England to be placed.”
Yet that is of course what happened for a long time. So-called “gag rules” (1836) for instance, automatically shelved any petitions related to slavery, thus suppressing anti-slavery voices. In the USA of 2025, we are seeing “ag-gag” laws, designed to prevent the public from accessing information about agricultural operations…
Of course there are also differences between human bondage and animal exploitation: The enslaved had agency and could organize. If animals have a voice, agency, or any ways to resist their exploitation, humans are perfectly able to ignore or counter those. The animals cannot organize – only their human allies can. Enslaved or formerly enslaved humans, on the other hand, were important forces and voices for their own liberation. It is estimated, for instance, that mutiny broke out on ten percent of slave voyages (even though most were unsuccessful)…
When examining the successes or failures of past movements, we tend to interpret history in ways that reinforce our existing beliefs and perspectives. This confirmation bias serves no benefit to the animals we aim to help… There’s compelling evidence that the fight against slavery proceeded quite differently from how many contemporary animal rights abolitionists often portray it. It seems that in the fight against human bondage, pragmatism and incrementalism, rather than some sort of “immediatism” was key to ending slavery…
Learning about their fights and successes makes one wonder how we are doing in the animal movement… Thinking about the time when the horrors of factory farming and animal exploitation will be behind us (best case scenario). Looking back from that distant point, how will people see us? When sociologists or historians will write the history of the animal liberation movement, which moments will they identify as the most defining ones, which choices as the most strategic, which wins as the most crucial? SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: