Once I thought that the videos taken by groups such as Mercy for Animals were videos showing the extreme behavior of certain bad actors, and that, as such, they could be dismissed by the general population as not being representative of the “animal industry” as a whole. However, at that time I was allowing a particular way of looking at the world to cloud my judgment and I now have come to a different conclusion.
These videos show what is, and indeed what must be, the routine behavior in these settings. When people are given absolute authority over the lives of others who are deemed “unworthy”, they will, by and large, abuse that authority and abuse those others, in the most egregious ways. It is not unusual at all, it is the necessary result of the structure of the institution itself (and not the result of “bad people” acting badly – if any one of us were in the same institutional setting, we would more likely than not exhibit the same abusive behaviors). Please read about the Stanford Prison Experiments (here and here) to learn more about the corrupting influence of power and the evils of “othering” if you doubt me.
The value, then, in these videos is that they expose exactly how routine this abuse is, and how such abuse is a necessary outcome of the very systems of exploitation themselves – these videos show that it is impossible for there ever to be any “humane” way of breeding, raising, confining and slaughtering other animals, no matter how we try to reform it. As reforms are instituted, and as Mercy for Animals and others continue to produce these videos, it will become plain – to a public who would rather not see – that any reform is not enough reform and that the only reform of exploitation that will respect and protect other animals is the eradication of exploitation altogether.
We don’t need fewer of these undercover videos, we need more of them.
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