By Grace Hussain for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Judith Ruiz-Branch for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Lisa Castagnozzi considers herself an engaged community resident. The longtime animal rights activist stays plugged in on local issues, yet even she was surprised to learn a new slaughterhouse was planned in Milwaukee, right up until approval for the development of the land was poised to pass the city council. Castagnozzi wasn’t alone. Most of the community had been left in the dark, it turned out. Once Castagnozzi and the group Slaughter Free Milwaukee found out, they jumped into action to spread word of the planned slaughterhouse — ultimately winning their fight to prevent the plant from being constructed.

Slaughterhouse Owners Try to Keep Zoning Applications Quiet

Though the slaughterhouse was planned for Milwaukee’s Century City Business Park — a district that city officials have struggled to get businesses to move into — numerous residential neighborhoods would be affected. Yet initially, only a few people were there to weigh in on the proposal at the public council committee meeting where the proposal was first addressed.

It was at that meeting that members of the council, including Alderman Robert Bauman, began questioning company representatives, and learned what the company was proposing was a slaughterhouse. The facility would slaughter roughly 500 cattle daily, including animals from Illinois, Montana, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, according to the company’s representative at the meeting.

At a zoning meeting held a week later, Alderman Robert Bauman called these suspiciously quiet efforts a “strange proceeding,” pointing to the lack of briefing by the Department of City Development and the absence of citizens weighing in during the public comment period.

“There was nobody there,” he said during another zoning meeting. “There were no citizens in support and no citizens in opposition.” The effort to keep the new facility proposal quiet was alarming to Castagnozzi, both as an animal rights advocate and a member of the community.

“We didn’t know anything about a slaughterhouse potentially coming into Milwaukee,” she says, calling it “kind of out of the blue.” The fact that the meat processing plant would be constructed in a “city-owned lot” meant the community should have a chance to weigh in, she says.

Alderman Bauman expressed similar concern in his public comments. “Slaughterhouses and…all types of businesses that produce noise and dirt and odor have historically had a stigma in central city communities,” he pointed out in his remarks to the full city council. “Why? Because for whatever reason, those types of negative land uses just seem to always end up in poor neighborhoods — primarily neighborhoods of color.”

Only Days to Inform Their Neighbors

Once Castagnozzi and her small cohort of animal rights activists did learn about the proposed measure, they had just a few days before the next meeting was scheduled to get the word out. With limited time and resources, the group took to online and physical spaces to reach community members, and began to make headway. “We as a group, made flyers, did social media, we physically spread out in the community and went to the coffee shops,” she says.

Some policymakers “don’t care what kind of jobs they are, how much they pay or what the working conditions are like — they’re jobs,” says Robert Grillo, head of Slaughter Free Network. According to government documents, the facility would have paid employees an average of $17 an hour — significantly above the city’s $7.25 minimum wage but well below the salary needed to live comfortably in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee’s residents do care, it turns out. In a matter of days, activists organized dozens of opposition letters and delivered them to council members. “Jobs are not just jobs. Slaughterhouse work is among the most exploitative, dangerous and relatively low paid work in the market,” reads the letter signed and sent by many of the opposing residents.

During a city council meeting, Alderman Khalif Rainey who at the time represented the neighborhood raised objections to campaign efforts. Rainey argued that the letters were not reflective of the community, and that he had received messages from people out of the state, but barely heard from his own constituents.

Though he voted to send the proposal back to committee for further discussion, Rainey argued that the jobs it would bring would improve the lives of the majority-Black community in which the slaughterhouse would be constructed. “That’s a good, well-paying job,” he said in the council meeting, “so again, it’s crazy how all roads lead back to this one question: do Black lives matter?”

Castagnozzi disagrees. “No one we spoke to was for it,” she says. At one community cafe near the proposed site, Castagnozzi says, none of the customers knew what was planned and, when they found out, they were appalled. “They just couldn’t believe it. Like, ‘what do you mean? Like, that’s the business they’re going to put in our neighborhood’.”

Getting communities to agree, collectively, to oppose a local initiative that offers jobs can be difficult. “People are afraid of retaliation. People are afraid of speaking out or they have certain relationships, and they’re worried about those relationships causing them problems with their work or in their personal life,” says Grillo.

It’s a risk that paid off for the Wisconsin group that have now organized themselves as an official chapter of the larger national organization. Strauss canceled their plans to build a new facility in Milwaukee. Ted Beneski, head of Insight Equity Holdings, LLC, which owns a majority share in Strauss Meats, sent an email from his iPhone to Grillo. The company’s “strategy has changed,” it read, and Strauss is “not planning to build a slaughterhouse [in or near Milwaukee] or anywhere else for that matter.” Earlier that summer, the remaining Strauss Meats slaughterhouse in the Milwaukee area was also shuttered. According to a press release the decision was the result of their recent divestment from the lamb and veal businesses, combined with the relocation of their beef operations to Illinois.

To persuade community residents to speak out, advocates and organizers have to “create a tension,” says Grillo. “It’s a moral crisis,” he adds. “You have to create that to get people to take sides.”


Grace Hussain wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Kathryn Carley for Maine News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Donald Trump is in the process of filling out his second-term cabinet, and he recently announced appointees to lead the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Health And Human Services (HHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Trump’s recent cabinet appointments have the potential to significantly change food systems in America — but how?

Laura Fox, environmental lawyer and research scholar at Yale Law School, tells Sentient that we can expect “deregulation, lax enforcement, reduced oversight and de-emphasization or even denial of certain frameworks, such as climate change,” from the incoming appointees.

“Those are things that I think we can anticipate seeing across the board that will have huge negative impacts on food systems and agriculture,” Fox says. “Environmental justice issues are going to take a back seat, or just be ignored, in these agencies’ decisions.”

Will Trump’s Appointees Do Whatever He Wants?

It’s worth pointing out at the top that, although Trump’s appointees are individuals with their own viewpoints, cabinet secretaries generally do what the president wants them to do. They do have discretion and a degree of autonomy, but in practice, agency heads operate largely as functionaries to carry out the president’s agenda, not individual actors implementing their own favored policies.

There are exceptions to this, of course. In 2017, Trump became outraged with his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, after Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department’s Russia probe without first consulting the president. But this is the exception that proves the rule; for his second term, Trump has appointed a staunch loyalist to head the Justice Department, not a senator to whom he has no personal ties.

Similarly, Trump’s picks to head the USDA, EPA and HHS are likely to implement his larger policy agenda, regardless of their own personal views. There have already been some small signs of this acquiescence: Trump’s HHS appointee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once an outspoken opponent of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, but stopped mentioning the chemical after allying himself with Trump, whose former EPA head Scott Pruitt thwarted a ban on the pesticide during Trump’s first term.

Nevertheless, it’s still worth looking at who each of these folks are, and what their appointments might mean for animals and food systems in America.

United States Department of Agriculture: Brooke Rollins

Nominated to lead the USDA is Brooke Rollins, a conservative attorney who has served in a number of policy-oriented positions over the last few decades. In Texas, she served as former Gov. Rick Perry’s policy director, and later led the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Rollins held several White House positions during Trump’s first term, including Director of the Domestic Policy Council, Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives and Director of the Office of American Innovation. She currently leads the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a Trump-aligned think tank.

Rollins has some personal history in agriculture, as she grew up on a farm and got her undergraduate degree in agricultural leadership and development. She doesn’t appear to have any professional experience in the sector, though, and aside from her vocal opposition to Chinese ownership of American farmland, Rollins’ views on agricultural issues are largely unknown.

Given her longtime involvement in conservative politics, however, she likely shares the same general positions on agricultural and food issues as most Republicans — that is, skepticism of climate-focused initiatives, support for crop subsidies, a desire to cut SNAP funding and a general opposition to regulations.

Environmental Protection Agency: Rep. Lee Zeldin

To lead the EPA, Trump has nominated Rep. Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican. Zeldin is most known for his 2022 run for New York governor; although he lost, it was the closest New York gubernatorial race in nearly 30 years, and his respectable showing made Zeldin something of a rising star in the Republican Party.

Like Rollins, Zeldin has little apparent background in the policy area over which Trump is giving him control. His background is in the military, and during his eight years in Congress, Zeldin didn’t sit on any subcommittees relating to the environment.

Zeldin’s voting record on environmental legislation earned him a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, suggesting a hostile attitude toward regulatory efforts to protect the environment. In a 2014 interview, he questioned the urgency of climate change. “I’m not sold yet on the whole argument that we have as serious a problem as other people are,” he told Newsday. More recently, he spoke of his desire to “roll back regulations that are forcing businesses [to] struggle” after Trump announced his nomination.

Department of Health and Human Services: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Trump has tapped attorney and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the HHS. Kennedy was once a respected environmental lawyer, but has since fallen out of favor with many environmentalists due to his increasingly controversial views, which include opposing offshore wind energy and incorrectly claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine is “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Kennedy has many opinions about many topics, but plenty of them will fall outside his jurisdiction as HHS secretary. For instance, he’s spoken out against various pesticides and advocates frequently for organic foods — but pesticides are regulated by the EPA, and organic food by the USDA, so he won’t have much power over these areas if he’s confirmed as HHS secretary.

How Trump’s Appointees Could Affect Food Systems

Let’s take a look at a few ways in which these three appointees might have an impact on food and animals in the United States.

Failing to Regulate Pollution from Factory Farms

Although food systems generally don’t fall under the EPA’s jurisdiction, Zeldin’s pro-business stance could nevertheless have an impact on what we eat and drink. As part of its enforcement of the Clean Water Act, the EPA regulates waste and water discharges from factory farms, and the agency is currently in the midst of re-evaluating whether these regulations are sufficient.

This study hasn’t been completed yet, but once it is, the EPA will decide whether to impose more regulations on these discharges. Zeldin’s affinity for deregulation suggests that he won’t be inclined to implement additional restrictions on factory farm pollution, even if the agency’s study suggests that they’re necessary. Such a decision would, in turn, stall efforts to make American drinking water safer — which was the point of the study in the first place.

Similarly, Fox tells Sentient that Zeldin is unlikely to crack down on other kinds of pollution from factory farms, specifically methane.

“The EPA has not done much on regulating methane emissions from large animal feeding operations, and we don’t see that happening under a Zeldin administration at all,” Fox says. “I don’t think it’s unique to Zeldin. I imagine any of the Republican appointees are likely to de-emphasize or deny the impacts of climate change.”

Changing School Lunches & Dietary Guidelines for Americans

One tool Kennedy and Rollins would have for influencing American food systems is the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). Written jointly by the USDA and the HHS and updated every five years, this is a lengthy compilation of dietary recommendations that guides federal food purchases and other programs involving food.

One such program is the National School Lunches Program (NSLP). The USDA administers the NSLP, and by law, the lunches themselves must adhere to the DGA’s general guidance (although the USDA has some wiggle room when it comes to interpreting these recommendations, as we’ll see).

In total, the DGA influences over $80 billion in federal spending every year, and as heads of the USDA and HHS, Rollins and Kennedy would both have a major say over what’s included in the next version of the document. This, in turn, would give them indirect influence over how a number of federal food programs operate.

For instance, Kennedy is a longtime opponent of ultra-processed foods, and has said that he wants them out of school lunches “immediately.” As head of HHS, Kennedy wouldn’t have any direct say over the school lunches program — but he would have direct say over what’s in the next edition of the DGA.

“USDA is required by statute to update child nutrition meal patterns to conform with the latest DGA, which they do every five years,“ Chloe Waterman, senior program manager at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth, tells Sentient. “Kennedy could theoretically push for limits on ultra-processed foods in the 2025-2030 DGA, which could — again, in theory, and in another five years from now — translate to USDA issuing child nutrition meal patterns that limit ultra-processed foods.”

Project 2025, the lengthy book of policy recommendations prepared by Trump allies prior to his election, recommended abolishing the DGA entirely, ostensibly because “issues such as climate change and sustainability [have] infiltrated” the guidelines, which are officially meant to cover personal health, not planetary health.

This is a misrepresentation, however, as the guidelines do not take climate or sustainability into account. This possibility was floated in 2015 during preliminary meetings about the DGA, but Congress immediately shot down the idea, and passed legislation that actively forbids the document from taking anything into consideration other than personal health and nutrition.

In any event, the USDA and HHS are required by law to publish a DGA every five years, so eliminating the guidelines entirely would require Congressional action. But simply changing what the guidelines say would not.

Cutting SNAP Funding

The USDA is also in charge of SNAP, the federal food stamps program. While SNAP is funded by Congress through the Farm Bill, the actual benefit amounts themselves are determined by something called the Thrifty Food Plan. This is essentially the USDA’s guide for eating healthfully on a limited budget, and it’s written in accordance with the DGA’s recommendations.

This means that any changes Rollins or Kennedy make to the DGA would also influence how much money food stamps recipients receive. It’s difficult to game things out beyond that, as it would depend on what specific changes they make to the DGA — and whether these changes promote foods that are more or less expensive than current SNAP benefits allow for.

Congressional Republicans have proposed changes to the SNAP program that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would effectively cut SNAP payments by $30 billion over the next decade. While this effort is taking place in Congress, where Rollins has no authority, it’s still a good indicator of where Republican Party officials stand on the issue of food stamps: they want to cut them.

Lifting Restrictions on Raw Milk

As HHS chief, Kennedy would be in charge of several other agencies as well, including the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA, which Kennedy has accused of waging a “war on public health,” regulates interstate distribution and sale of raw milk — and Kennedy is a fan of raw milk.

He shouldn’t be, as raw milk is not safe for human consumption and can even facilitate the spread of zoonotic diseases like avian flu. Nevertheless, Kennedy could lift the FDA’s (modest) restrictions on unpasteurized milk sales, making it easier for raw milk fans to find, purchase and consume the dangerous beverage, which recently gave 171 people salmonella.

Deregulating Pesticides

How exactly the second Trump administration will handle pesticides is a bit of a mystery. On the one hand, Trump has elevated and heaped praise upon Kennedy, who is broadly in favor of additional pesticide regulations; on the other hand, Trump’s first administration deregulated pesticides.

Regardless, the EPA is in charge of pesticide regulation in the U.S., so this responsibility would fall to Zeldin, not Kennedy. While Zeldin’s views on pesticides are anybody’s guess, he shares the Republican Party’s general loathing of regulations, and both progressives and conservatives expect him to pursue an agenda of deregulation as EPA chief, which could include easing regulations on pesticides.

Lax Enforcement of Animal Welfare Standards

Fox tells Sentient that she expects Rollins — ”and probably anybody that’s going to be coming into USDA in this administration” — to pursue deregulatory policies that will hurt animals and humans alike.

“We’re going to see deregulation, which affects animal welfare standards and treatment of animals at production facilities,” Fox says. “Likely, policies that will increase slaughterhouse line speeds, which then risk worker safety, food safety and animal welfare.”

She also suspects that under Rollins, inspection duties at slaughterhouses will be increasingly privatized.

“Right now, we have federal employees looking at violations of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and under the first Trump administration, they had proposed allowing facility employees to do that function [instead],” Fox explains. “So I imagine that’s going to continue, which could lead to fewer enforcement actions against humane handling violations.”

Supporting Agricultural Subsidies

Every year, the U.S. government hands out over $30 billion in subsidies to agricultural producers, and the USDA is in charge of distributing this money. This is another area in which Rollins, as USDA chief, could conceivably have some influence.

While Republicans and Democrats sometimes bicker about the details from time to time, farm subsidies themselves are generally supported by both major parties. There’s no significant movement within the GOP to eliminate or significantly reduce farm subsidies, which isn’t the case with many other federal spending programs.

In fact, during the last Republican administration, the USDA actually increased farm subsidy payments by a significant margin. It did this in response to Trump’s trade war with China, which caused the value of U.S. farm exports — and thus profits for U.S. agricultural producers — to plummet.

With Trump pledging even more tariffs on day one of his second term, it seems highly possible that the USDA, under Rollins’ guidance, could again increase farm subsidies to stave off financial disaster in the U.S. farming sector.

The Bottom Line

It’s worth keeping in mind that none of these appointments are a sure thing just yet, as all three nominees will need to be confirmed by the Senate. Incoming presidents generally don’t have too hard of a time getting their cabinets confirmed, but it’s entirely possible that some combination of Rollins, Kennedy and Zeldin won’t win confirmation.

If they do, though, our food systems could undergo some serious changes. Exactly what those changes will look like remains to be seen, but it’s fair to say that in general, they’ll likely prioritize business interests and profits over environmental welfare, food safety and personal health.


Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

For the last few years, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have taken part in Veganuary, a challenge to give veganism a try for the month of January. What began as a small campaign in the UK in 2014 has since grown into a global movement drawing attention to the intersection of diet, ethics and environmental sustainability. With more than 1.8 million participants in January 2024 (meaning those who sought resources from the Veganuary organization) — and many more unofficially signed up — Veganuary’s potential impact is not insignificant.

Sandra Hungate, director of Veganuary U.S., tells Sentient that for every million people who go vegan for 31 days, around “the equivalent of 1.2 million flights from London to Paris” in emissions are saved. Longer term, one study found replacing even half of the meat and milk consumed with vegan alternatives would curb food and land use emissions by 31 percent in 30 years.

As an organization, Veganuary has also developed into a non-profit, working throughout the year with individuals and businesses “to move to a plant-based diet as a way of protecting the environment, preventing animal suffering and improving the health of millions of people,” according to its website. The group offers resources, recipes and tips, and raises awareness about animal agriculture, sustainability and the impact of our food choices on the planet. It also works with companies and institutions to implement Veganuary on a greater scale.

Still, some critics of Veganuary argue that it focuses too much on short- rather than long-term commitments to sustainable dietary change and lifestyle choices, and that the organization is too focused on corporate partnerships. For example, Jake Conroy, also known as The Cranky Vegan, stated in a 2023 video that Veganuary is more focused on reducetarianism than veganism, and also questions the organization’s methods of measuring success. In a more recent post on Instagram, Dr. Leila Dehghan called out the Veganuary organization for working with militaries and reinforcing Eurocentric capitalism.

“Veganuary is far from promoting Eurocentric food norms,” Nital Jethalal, co-chair of the Veganuary Canada Coalition, tells Sentient. “It actually challenges the dominance of Western meat-heavy diets, and promotes alternatives that are rooted in non-European food systems.”

While it remains difficult to pin down exact numbers on Veganuary participants, the impact — both for animals and the environment — is potentially significant. Let’s take a closer look.

Why Is Veganuary in January?

After the indulgences of the holiday season, January is often considered a time to start fresh, embrace healthier habits, make New Year’s resolutions and re-center the body and mind. January is also considered a time for new beginnings and doing good for the world around us, making it a fitting time to take on a diet with both health and environmental benefits, as well as less animal suffering. As a 31-day challenge, Veganuary hopes to be part of the New Year’s resolution season while also quelling any overwhelm participants may have about committing to going vegan long-term. By offering the option to simply give it a go for the month. there is hope it will stick or at least make people more adept at incorporating plant-based eating into their diets.

What Does Being Vegan for January Mean?

The Vegan Society defines veganism as “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.” It adds that, by extension, veganism also “promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms, it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”

As a month-long challenge, total veganism would mean opting out of consuming any products of animal origin — including meat, dairy, eggs and honey — throughout January. For some Veganuary participants, this may also mean using only cruelty-free home and beauty products, not purchasing clothing or other items made with animal-based textiles, such as leather, wool, down, fur or silk, and not visiting animal-exploiting businesses such as zoos, marine parks and circuses, among others.

What Is the Impact of Veganuary?

In 2020, University of Oxford environmental researcher Joseph Poore estimated that thanks to the 350,000 people who participated in Veganuary that year, global carbon emissions were cut by about 45,000 tons. This is equivalent to removing nearly 8,600 cars from the road for a year. At the individual level, going vegan for one month can save approximately 33,000 gallons of water, 1,200 pounds of grain, 900 square feet of forest, 600 pounds of CO2 and 30 animal lives. Multiply that by the number of unofficial Veganuary participants, which Hungate puts at 25 million for 2024, and you have a significant impact. Huntgate says 2024 participation was measured through “several You Gov services in nine of our core countries, and that established a percentage of people who reported trying vegan during Veganuary in 2024.”

How Many People Stay Vegan After January?

Veganuary reports growth each year, and the organization releases data most years, based on participant surveys from those who signed up through the site. According to that data for 2024, the organization reports that 81 percent of participants who took the survey, “maintained a dramatic reduction in their animal product consumption” six months on, with 27 percent reporting that they continued to eat a fully vegan diet, and 37 percent “eating at least 75 percent less meat and other animal products than pre-Veganuary.”

Nearly all participants who reported not maintaining a vegan diet after the challenge nevertheless “said they’re likely to try a vegan diet again in the future,” according to the group.

The movement is also growing globally, with more countries joining as official partners each year. This year, Canada signed on as an official Veganuary partner, along with Malaysia and Peru.

Jethalal tells Sentient that the new membership is an indication the movement is expanding. “Veganuary started in the UK in 2014,” he says, “and it grew to 17 countries last year.” There are three new countries this year too, including Canada. “So, good sign.”

Being a member country, explains Jethalal, means “working towards Veganuary’s strategic objectives, which are increasing participation through their 31-day pledge, corporate outreach from large multinationals to small retailers, offering support to increase production of animal-free items,” as well as raising awareness with the help of celebrities, influencers and mainstream media.

Jethalal adds that Canada is particularly well positioned for Veganuary interest after the federal government published its updated Food Guide in 2019, encouraging Canadians to eat more plant proteins.

Jethalal also disagrees that Veganuary is too focused on reduction rather than elimination of animal consumption. “As a campaign, Veganuary has been shown to lower barriers to entry to plant-based eating and makes it approachable for a broad audience,” he says, with a “goal to inspire lasting change.”

How To Take Part in Veganuary

While officially signing up for the challenge on the Veganuary website isn’t required, doing so allows participants to partake of a variety of resources for free, including a “celebrity cookbook, meal plans, nutrition guides, recipes and lots more,” according to the website. But for those wanting to go at it on their own, there is also an abundance of online information available for how to veganize your favorite meals, how to swap out animal products for plant-based ones and how to get enough essential nutrients throughout the month, and beyond.

The Bottom Line

The growing popularity of Veganuary highlights the tension between the entrenched culture of animal agriculture and the growing urgency of addressing climate change, public health crises and animal welfare. The month-long challenge is considered a user-friendly way to introduce veganism to those who may not otherwise try to drop all animal products from their diet in the long-term. While the exact success of the challenge is difficult to measure, the Veganuary organization has had some notable wins (including helping the author of this story go vegan).


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Nebraska News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Livestock auctions exist all across North America. They serve as a stop between the farms where animals are born, and the farms where they will be "fattened" or "finished;" the stop between life and death, where animals are sold to be slaughtered. In these fast-paced spaces, animals are pushed through like products - prodded, chased, tossed and dragged - by people paid to get the job done, quickly.

Between late 2022 and early 2024, footage was gathered from over a dozen of these auctions, from across 10 U.S. states by Pete Paxton (Sentient has agreed to use an alias), an undercover investigator with the group Strategies for Ethical and Environmental Development, or SEED.

For a recent story for Vox Media, I was tasked with watching this footage, which shows terrified, confused and exhausted animals being handled harshly, or outright abused. Some animals are shown with injuries, while others have already died at auction.

The footage also shows workers with seemingly no regard for the animals' suffering. Some lash out at the animals in frustration, while others laugh at animals in pain.

"Hundreds or even thousands of animals are sold at auctions within hours," Paxton writes on SEED's website, "and workers must keep up the pace to move scared, exhausted, sick and injured animals in and out of pens. Workers experience dehydration, hunger and exhaustion as a result, which often leads to impatience and subsequent abuse."

Writing the Vox story was difficult. The 20-minute compilation of secretly filmed clips initially took me a week to get through; I could only watch for a few minutes at a time before the discomfort became unbearable. But then, over time, something interesting happened: watching the footage became easier for me. And Paxton understands, firsthand, why.

Desensitization and Animal Abuse

Working on the story over a few months, I had to go back to the footage over and over again. As I did, the images and sounds that had once made me gasp and cover my eyes became less horrific. Over time, they even became bearable. I had become desensitized to the animals' pain and fear, a phenomenon common among those who work in animal farming spaces like auctions.

Dr. Philip Tedeschi, a clinical professor at the University of Denver, and an expert in the human-animal connection, explains that for people working in animal farming spaces, empathy can become incompatible with the job, "inefficient" and "inconvenient."

"One of the things we know about studying empathy is that the presence of empathy can be an inhibitor to engaging in the behavior itself," he explains. "If you're required to engage in forcing animals through a meat processing plant, or expected to stick to a very strict timeline," like at auctions or on an assembly line, "you can't afford to be gentle or kind or humane. Then one of the things that's inefficient or incompatible is to have empathy for those individual animals." Emotionally distancing from animals can aid these workers in getting through the work day.

Paxton admits that the work he does as an undercover investigator is "pretty fucking difficult."

"I've had ex-military and ex-law enforcement reach out to me, and they're like, 'I don't know how you do that, because, man, I would lose my shit.'" But Paxton knows he's there to complete an important task, and that allows him to compartmentalize his feelings. "I tell investigators when I train them, 'It's way easier than you think to get used to the abuse, because when you see it there's two things going on in your head: one is, 'Oh, shit, an animal is being abused,' and then the other thing in your head is, 'I have to document that and not get caught.'"

For Paxton, overriding his concerns about the animal abuse he witnesses is an important part of his job as an investigator. For the people who work at animal auctions, Paxton believes desensitization operates much the same way. Abuse of animals at auctions becomes normalized, Paxton reports, as workers are pressured by management to move animals in and out - fast.

The harsh environment forces workers - ranging from inexperienced teens to long-time workers - to handle animals roughly to keep up with the demanding work. They also learn abusive behaviors from each other.

The Mental Health Impact of Working in Animal Agriculture

As part of his investigation, Paxton kept video footage and written records of certain people he met while working at the auctions. On SEED's website, he describes some of these workers as "good people" who "do bad things."

For example, in one small rural town, Paxton met 17-year-old "Audrey." Exhausted and under pressure, she mimicked abusive actions she witnessed from co-workers, reflecting learned behaviors. "As the workday dragged on, her frustrations led her to drag baby lambs and goats by their legs in fits of anger, mirroring the abusive actions she saw around her," Paxton writes. He also recalls "Stewart," a hardworking 20-year-old, dragging goats and jabbing calves with his keys, seeing cruelty as necessary for the job, "a means to an end."

Similar working conditions have also been documented in slaughterhouses, where both workers and animals are known to suffer. Slaughterhouse workers have for decades been documented engaging in extreme cruelty beyond basic animal handling.

For example, a 2018 investigation by Animal Aid uncovered UK slaughterhouse workers beating cows with pipes, while encouraging others to join in. In 2022, Animal Equality documented workers in Brazil kicking, beating and dragging cows by ropes, and twisting their tails to force movement.

Research has shown that the slaughterhouse environment, and the nature of slaughterhouse work itself, can and does have notable psychological impacts on workers. For example, slaughterhouse workers are four times more likely to be clinically depressed than the general public, according to a 2015 study. Higher rates of anxiety, psychosis and serious psychological distress are also found among those working in slaughterhouses, compared to the population at large.

As Dr. Kendra Coulter, now coordinator of Huron University's Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership program, told Sentient in 2020: in slaughterhouses, both workers and animals are commodified, "animals literally so." But both are ultimately seen as disposable.

Cultural Impact on Animal Treatment

Upbringing and culture can also play a key role in one's ability to turn off empathy for farm animals. As Tedeschi explained to Sentient on the topic of rodeos, if a person is brought up since childhood to believe that something is "culturally defined as a deserving activity," it becomes normalized.

We see this in rodeo activities geared specifically toward children, such as "pig scrambles" and "mutton busting," where children will ride sheep or other animals, "or engage in wrestling an animal or controlling them in some form," Tedeschi says, "And then getting a lot of attention for that. This is early shaping of those behaviors." Organizations like 4H and Future Farmers of America similarly serve to socialize children to emotionally distance themselves from the animals they are tasked to care for, before selling them to be slaughtered.

Paxton notes that the people he met while working at livestock auctions come from this same wider community. "They're the same people," he says. "They fucking love rodeos." This also includes the police and inspectors on site. "If you're a cop and you're in a rural area, you probably have cows, you've probably kicked them," he says. "Your parents have kicked them, and you're not going to bring charges against a fucking kid or elderly person who does the same thing."

"It's cowboy culture," Renee King-Sonnen, a former cattle rancher turned animal sanctuary operator, told Vox. Cowboy culture involves the normalization of inhumane treatment of animals at auctions, she adds. The drive to belong to that culture is what drives that shared behavior.

"People that are part of this community or this culture feel a solidarity with each other," explains Dr. Rebekah Humphreys, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Wales, and an expert in animal ethics. In the case of spaces where animals are farmed, slaughtered, tested on, etc., "the mistreatment of animals," she says, is "reinscribed and perpetuated through cultures. And then anyone that is outside of that norm is criticized as being overly sentimental or anthropomorphic."

Paxton believes that most people working at auctions don't believe they're doing anything wrong when they mistreat animals. "For many of them, it is the right thing, pulling a screaming goat by the ear," he says. "This animal just needs to move, [and] everyone's always done it that way. Does that make me an asshole?" he asks, putting himself in the position of the workers. "Or wouldn't I really be an asshole if I said, 'Everyone stop the entire auction?' If I had to assuage this animal's feelings and recognize this animal as an individual?"

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, both Tedeschi and Humphreys agree that the commodification of farm animals as property, legally and morally, allows places like animal auctions to exist, and for farm animals to be othered so severely. "The industrialization and commodification of [farm animals] has turned them into objects to the extent that we are really quite distanced from them," says Humphreys.

And that distance, Tedeschi believes, prohibits humans from thinking of these animals with more ethical consideration. "We're not likely to see people do a deeper kind of moral investigation into how we interact with other animals, as long as we view them as having the same legal position as the toaster on our counter."

For people like Paxton and me, who exist outside that cowboy culture but are tasked with investigating it, the ability to compartmentalize - to distance ourselves from the natural empathy we feel for animals, in order to get the job done - also reveals just how easily desensitization can happen.

This is in part what allows Paxton to see those who abuse animals at auctions as otherwise good people. "I'm not really scared of these people," he says. "I didn't find them to be violent or terrifying people. They're fucking nice people," he says. As long as you're not a cow.


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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