It has long been the case that in most animal industries those who do the hands-on work are sorely taken advantage of with low wages, high health risk, and unique psychological pressures. Farming subsidies once meant to support local people and their families who depend entirely upon work with many unpredictable variables of risk, now goes instead to corporate executives, stockholders, lobbyists and politicians. In the case of livestock farming, this tax money is being paid like a crutch to an unsustainable and highly environmentally costly industry, whereas this money would be far better served by transitioning those hands-on workers to better-paid work with conditions of far less physical and mental risk.

Another area of deep concern that has long been a practice of the Animal Industrial Complex (which encompasses food, fur, leather, chemical, pharmaceutical, and other not so obvious industries), is the usurping of lands in impoverished countries for feed crops and grazing, often provoking violent conflicts and obliterating vital forests.

In developed countries it is in the poorer population areas where factory slaughterhouses or processing plants are located, relying on migrant workers, some trafficked illegally. These workers are at an extreme disadvantage, whether as local citizens, since where factory farms are located there is little other employment opportunity, or illegally trafficked workers who hesitate to claim workers’ rights fearing that any complaint would cause them to be dismissed and deported. Often these migrant workers are already coming from areas where their rights have been compromised, even their very lives may have been threatened, as may those of loved ones they were forced to leave behind, for which they seek work to bring those loved ones out of such dire circumstances. The industries of animal exploitation abuse these at-risk humans almost as much as the animals that form their products.