Agribusiness exploits humans and animals alike – legal protections should be species-blind
By siloing human rights from animal welfare, our regulatory framework makes it harder to see what – or rather who – such cross-species harms have in common.
Agribusiness exploits both humans and animals, and current legal protections fail to treat these abuses as equal. Dr Hugo Uys-Breytenbach, a legal theorist, argues that siloing human rights from animal welfare hinders the ability to recognize the common elements of cross-species harm. The Daybreak Foods case, where employees and livestock faced neglect and mistreatment, is not an isolated incident but a pattern of abuse.
The company struggled to survive, leading to job losses and unpaid wages. Pinnock and Venna's expose brought attention to the suffering, but the legal framework separates animal welfare from labor rights, failing to grasp the full scope of the harm. Agribusiness exploits all life, treating humans and animals as interchangeable resources for profit, rather than seeing them as parts of a single system of exploitation.
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