I watched animals fight for their lives in factory farms. ❘ The Humane League & Moving Animals
Adam Peditto
"These animals are experiencing a level of fear and pain that many of us cannot even comprehend."
Large corporations don't want you to see the pain & suffering that is central to our broken food system. Photojournalists like Amy Jones of Moving Animals bravely go undercover to document the abuse animals must endure behind closed doors. Moving Animals' work ensures that these animals' stories do not go unheard, allowing humans everywhere to feel empathy and inspire them to make change #ForTheAnimals.
Listen to Amy's story, and learn more.
Transcript
Amy Jones: It's really hard to properly articulate that feeling of watching an animal fight for their life right in front of you because these animals are, you know, they're experiencing levels of fear and pain that many of us can not even comprehend.
Man: It's okay. It's okay.
Amy Jones: Photography is an incredibly powerful way to tell stories, and some of the most overlooked stories in the world are those of animals. So I started the Moving Animals project and started documenting animals to try and help bring these stories, and of course the evidence of what actually happens behind the scenes to these animals, and try and bring all of that to the mainstream conversation.
One instance of this that really stands out to me is from when we were documenting the dairy industry in Sri Lanka. So there are loads of Western corporations that are pumping these huge sums of money into expanding the industrial dairy sector there, and of course the animals are suffering terribly because of this. So we documented at one point this really heavily pregnant cow who was just laying on her side and she was kept chained by her neck, and she was watching me the whole time. And your instincts want you to help her, to unchain her, to take her to safety. But you can't. So all you can do is try and tell her story with as much compassion as you can.
There are so many misconceptions about the animals that we eat. For example, pigs' natural lifespan is around 10 to 15 years, but in the food industry, pigs are sent to slaughter after just six months of life. And the animal agriculture industry tends to show us images of happy animals grazing in fields, when of course, that's so far from the reality.
Every year, there are billions of land animals and trillions of aquatic animals that are killed for food. When confronted with these huge numbers, it can be really hard to picture the individuals behind the stats. And so I hope that my work and my photographs can help bridge that gap a bit and allow others to really see the individual behind the numbers. Animal photojournalism is really helping more and more people around the world to sit up and take notice of the issues that animals are facing. And because of that, I think we need more and more photographers focusing on these animal stories. And this kind of photojournalism is a growing medium and that is only possible because more people are starting to pick up the cameras and shine the light into some of these really dark, scary places.
