Changemakers: Q&A with Humans and Other Animals director Mark Devries

In the heart of political turmoil, the Congo is the exclusive habitat of bonobos on our planet. As Mark readied himself for his expedition into the remote jungle, he and his team faced the formidable challenge of arranging meetings with scientists amid country-wide internet shutdowns, the evacuation of the US embassy, and shifting leadership dynamics.

It’s a powerful start to the film, seeing these animals, which serves as a poignant reminder that there isn't a distinct boundary separating us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Animals are no less sentient or intelligent just because they happen to look different from us.

Mark also emphasizes the extraordinary measures he takes to gain access to factory farms. Recognizing that the industry thrives on our lack of awareness to perpetuate the production of animal products, often in deeply distressing conditions, Mark commissioned the development of a specialized robot capable of peering into the ventilation systems of these facilities. In certain instances, he employed disguises and elaborate misdirection tactics, all driven by his unwavering commitment to uncover the truth and disrupt the established norms of our food production system without sacrificing entertainment value or turning off viewers.

Mark sits down with The Humane League’s own President, Dr. Vicky Bond, in a Q&A conversation about the ramifications of speciesism, the harsh realities of Big Ag, and factory farming.

How is rational thought at odds with our views that nonhuman animals exist for the use of humans? How does motivated reasoning play into this?

Vicky Bond: To say that animals exist only for the use of humans based on ethics completely ignores the potential for suffering of those animals and their intrinsic worth or value as living creatures. If we look at this through the lens of social progress, rational thought demands that we challenge these outdated ideas and beliefs. As society evolves, we are moving away from the view that animals are only here for human use.

Mark DeVries: We can concoct ideologies, reasons, and justifications for whatever we think will benefit us. The idea that non-human animals exist for human use seems connected to a long history of believing that groups of humans exist for the benefit of other groups of humans. Aristotle famously put forward the notion referred to as the great ‘Chain of Being,’ which not surprisingly included Greek men above all else. Coincidentally, he was a Greek man, right? And so, today, at least explicitly or overtly, we recognize that some ethnicities don't exist for the sake of other ethnicities and that women don't exist for the sake of men. It's important to remember how widespread—at least to the dominant groups, in this case, Greek men and later European men—and accepted these ideologies were. The idea of questioning some of those ideas may have seemed absurd, contrary to a natural order or something that we just observe as obvious.

And today, even if we explicitly don't believe those things about groups of humans, [we retain the] perception that other animals exist to benefit us. Humans still hold very tightly to these attitudes even though their foundations have been knocked out from under them.

Motivated reasoning plays into this. We're starting off wanting to think that chickens are not intelligent, don't have complex emotional lives, or are not particularly sentient. Of course, if we believe that, ethically, chickens matter less because they're different from us, we are interested in reaching those conclusions. We are interested in reaching those conclusions because we have certain individual and cultural habits in which we have placed animals in the position of existing—from our perspective—for our use. It's really difficult to overstate how powerful motivated reasoning is with almost everything we do.

Vicky: It's amazing how much culture plays into everything. If we go back to the agriculture industry, they maintain this ability to be publicly overlooked for what is blatant animal abuse. If those animals were suffering in a person's house the way they suffer on a farm, we would put that person in front of a judge and hold them up in court.

Mark: One thing that people misperceive about animal issues is that they think of it as something that only matters to the extent that we happen to have kind feelings towards animals. While it's good to have kind feelings towards animals, it's also true that a fundamental ethical principle we hold with respect to humans is that, all else being equal, causing harm is wrong. Since nonhuman animals can also be harmed—such as experiencing pain and suffering—this principle extends to them as well. As you said Vicky, the most basic and straightforward reasoning points to animals not being here for human use.

According to animal welfare expert Donald Broom, the biggest animal welfare problem in the world is chickens kept for meat production. Why is talking about chickens so difficult if experts agree that the problem is so significant?

Mark: Chickens look different from us when compared with cows and pigs. They don't express things with their eyes, for example. And so we assume, because we think of ourselves as the standard of what matters, that chickens are less sentient, that they're experiencing less, and that their intellectual capacities are little or non-existent. The evidence is piling up against this, thanks to global interest in this issue and research on animal sentience and welfare. Research shows chickens have complex lives and emotions and are intelligent. Of course, those things matter because the complexity of their experience results in a massive amount of suffering when we deprive them of what they would naturally experience socially and physically.

It's important to realize that we do have less empathy for these animals in part because we don't know them as individuals. We know cats, dogs, and sometimes rabbits as individuals. We see firsthand their emotional lives and social complexity. Most of us are rarely around farmed animals and certainly not around enough to get to know, say, chickens as individuals. That's why most of our money for helping animals seems to go towards efforts involving dogs and cats. Still, the vast majority of animals—who matter just as much as these dogs and cats—have a relatively small number of people fighting on their behalf.

Vicky: Yeah, I agree. And empirical evidence is stronger than ever to show the complexity of animals other than humans—their ability to feel emotions and to have complex social groups. That challenges the notion of humans ranking above animals because we're smarter than them. We actually just didn't understand how animals were communicating. We didn't understand their mechanisms based on their biology or physiology, and it's becoming very clear from scientifically rooted evidence that we can't ignore that anymore.

How does Big Animal Agriculture avoid public scrutiny, and what are the consequences?

Vicky: The industry uses these perceived differences between farmed animals and companion animals to their advantage. It’s even evident in terminology and phrases like birdbrained. This concept of anthropism in humans plays into the factory farm industry. It allows them to keep and grow these chickens, turning them into a commodity for mass market use. They ignore all the suffering, including the suffering caused by what’s actually been built into chickens’ very genetics. Big Agriculture essentially created a product that appeals to the mass market by engineering chickens to grow an extremely large chicken breast, completely changing their physiology and leading them to painful conditions like lameness.

We see the ammonia burns on their skin and other diseases that they suffer as a consequence, and the industry hides behind this kind of greenwashing of ‘we're feeding the world’ and completely negates to talk about all the environmental impacts they're driving and the social impacts like working conditions in slaughterhouses. Big Animal Agriculture ignores that-everything considered holistically-the cost of chicken should be astronomical because it is destroying the planet.

Mark: Right; when you count the so-called externalities, it’s the animals who bear the cost more than anyone, but also the local communities and the climate; it's really extraordinary.

Vicky: Big Ag is now creating these active gag laws that prevent anyone from exposing the cruelty inflicted on animals raised for food. This industry is trying to maintain power and make as much money as possible. From your point of view, going in and doing some of this investigative work, what have you found from visiting these farms, Mark?

Mark: Each of these facilities—selected entirely at random- was absolutely filled with animal suffering. If these were dogs or cats or even wild animals, the conditions I saw would be in the news—that someone is, for example, keeping tens of thousands of dogs in a shed and walking through each day and taking out the dead ones.

How do producers and food companies lie to the consumer?

Vicky: The agricultural industry is hugely influential and maintains that power through lobbying and political influence. Marketing also plays a massive part in people's view of what farming should be, painting a picture of a small holding with a few chickens, a pig, a cow, and a farmer wearing some nice Wellington boots. There’s a little chicken and a shed, which looks lovely. And you think, ‘Oh, these old worldly ways of farming are beautiful,’ rather than thinking of the tens of thousands of chickens crammed into a shed and killed within six weeks of age. Thankfully, people like yourself, Mark, are getting in there and showing the horrors of farming on film.

Mark: In addition to our ideology that says animals exist for our use, these farms are enclosed and far away from most people. And on top of that, the industry uses misleading packaging that suggests something profoundly different happens at these factory farms. Like, as you said, Vicky, invoking a small number of animals walking in the grass.

I walked into these chicken facilities and spoke with the workers who have to go in and pile the dead animals up. The chickens were piled up at the exit each day, and you can see that they have burns from the ammonia caused by sitting on their waste and being unable to walk away from it. There are thousands of birds; the fumes are so strong that workers wear masks, and the ammonia litters the floor.

To the extent that the birds have visible burns, it's really a situation of animal abuse that would be opposed vigorously and roundly across the political spectrum. And yet it's hidden, as Vicky discussed, in part due to ag-gag laws.

How can individuals help reduce the suffering of animals in factory farms?

Vicky: There are ways to get involved to hold companies accountable. The Humane League has our Fast Action Network that people can go to and take digital actions. These actions may look like people contacting companies or CEOs to say why we need them to end cages or improve the welfare of chickens raised for meat. People taking tangible actions like that can have a huge impact on millions of animals that only take a few minutes of your day every day. The people power is incredible. Society is moving in that direction.

Also, let's take the cage-free law progress across the US. There’s a consumer shift because when we ask people (and it doesn't matter what country you're asking), at least 70% to 80% of people say they don't want animals from factory farms.

The choices consumers do have is limited and often needs to be clarified. The labels can be misrepresentative, and supermarkets actively put things in places to sell the cheaper meat fastest. There are many ways that these big companies make sure it makes it hard for people to make these decisions.

Mark: We should donate more to organizations helping others, whether organizations doing things for humanitarian aid or organizations exposing factory farming. The power of that really can't be overstated. I used to get coffee every day at the Starbucks near me. I realized I was spending about four dollars on a regular coffee. Now, if I make coffee at home, it saves an extra hundred dollars a month that I can donate instead, which is what I do now. The meat industry has billions of dollars, and animal advocacy is a small group of people, especially farmed animal advocacy. For those of us who can afford to donate, signing up for even a small monthly donation can make a profound difference.

What are the signs that society is moving away from factory farming? Plant-based meat options, cultivated meat options?

Vicky: We are seeing plant-based options increase across the board. That is moving in the right direction. The FDA has approved the first cultivated meat companies in the US. So, as a society, we are moving in the right direction. However, time is of the essence when we talk about nine billion chickens being raised for meat in the US alone every year. We need to make progress very quickly because billions of animals are suffering.

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