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explore not only the slaughter industry but also how, as a society, we facilitate violent labor and hide away that which is too repugnant to contemplate.

ethnographic approach

from the perspective of those who take part in it.

If we really understand what it means for a being to have moral status, it's something that animals have a right to; they have a right not to be killed and eaten for food and used in a variety of other ways to satisfy human desires.

I'm very extreme about this. Animals have just as much right not to be killed and eaten for food, or to be enslaved, as you or I have. That's what I mean when I say that humans and animals are morally equivalent.

Veganism is a moral imperative; in my book I call it the vegan imperative.

The FBI also warns of activist attempts to use “false employment.” This is undoubtedly related to activists who seek employment at factory farms and vivisection labs in order to expose animal welfare abuses. As I have reported here previously, the FBI has considered terrorism charges for non-violent undercover investigators. And multiple states have been seeking to criminalize undercover investigations as well. As I document in Green Is the New Red, there has been a slow and relentless expansion of “terrorism” rhetoric and investigations over the last 30 years. This type of language and FBI investigation was initially confined to property crimes by the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front (groups that have caused millions of dollars in economic loss, but have never harmed a human being).

What Cooney has done is to read deeply into the surprisingly large body of research on psychology and persuasiveness, in an effort to uncover approaches to advocacy that will deliver maximum impact.

I recently went to hear an author talk about his book on the neuroscience behind morality. He described how normally circumspect people turn off their natural compassion when placed in unnatural contexts. People we might consider “kind” or “decent” could be cruel when placed in a context in which cruelty is the norm. And what could be more unnatural than a typical U.S. animal control shelter which is little more than an assembly line of killing?

working at a shelter is a paycheck and nothing more to employees

The answer to that question can be found in the very nature of shelters themselves and the kind of people who apply to work in them.