I've seen a lot of viral tweets criticizing vegans for not caring about POC/crop pickers make the rounds. Bringing this up in an effort to drag vegans down is interesting when you consider the trauma slaughterhouse workers face in addition to (cont)

the several other ways in which animal agriculture harms POC, poor people, and other oppressed groups of humans. Let's start with the slaughterhouse workers. They are perhaps the most mistreated, abused, neglected, and forgotten about (cont)

group of workers out there. I'm sure you're not oblivious to the horrible conditions of factory farms, but let's not forget people have to work in those factory farms. Someone has to send the animals down the kill line. Someone has to slice their throats. Someone has to (cont)

butcher their bodies and package it. This is a horrific, traumatizing job that often necessitates working with dangerous equipment that can and does injure the people operating it. Being surrounded by danger and death every single day takes its toll on these (cont)

workers, who are often illegal immigrants who are forced to accept these conditions lest they have ICE called on them. Consequently, they face disproportionately high rates of conditions like PTSD, alcoholism, domestic violence, anxiety, depression, and suicide. (cont)

Wouldn't you if you stood in blood all day, killing mothers and their babies? Sending innocent, scared individuals to gas chambers? Bleeding them out? Slashing their throats? Hearing their screams and cries and knowing you're the one subjecting them to that? (cont)

Knowing they're suffering and dying at YOUR hand? Of course you would. Except you have the luxury of only imagining being in that position, whereas these workers are in that position every single day. Sometimes, this stress results in the workers (cont)

lashing out and taking out their anger on the animals. There have been numerous undercover investigations exposing workers abusing, hitting, and kicking animals, as well as banging their heads and otherwise torturing them more than what is necessary. Sometimes, (cont)

this stress is brought back home, and results in domestic and child abuse. I'd like to ask everyone reading this to also read the attached article by a slaughterhouse worker, in which they describe these very conditions. Here are some quotes because I know not everyone will(cont)

actually read it:
"There are things, though, that have the power to shatter the numbness. For me, it was the heads.

At the end of the slaughter line there was a huge skip, and it was filled with hundreds of cows' heads...But one thing was still attached - their eyeballs." (cont)

"I took him into a meeting room to calm him down - and all he could say was, "It's just not right, it's not right," over and over again. These were hard men, and they rarely showed any emotion. But I could see tears prickling his eyes." (cont)

"...[the baby cows] were so small and bony that they could easily skip out and trot around, slightly wobbly on their newly born legs. They sniffed us, like puppies, because they were young and curious. Some of the boys and I stroked them, and they suckled our fingers... (cont)

...When the time came to kill them, it was tough, both emotionally and physically...We put all five calves in at once. Then we killed them." (cont) https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50986683

And it's not just these immigrant slaughterhouse workers that animal agriculture harms either. Have you ever thought about what it's like to live near a factory farm? There are people who can tell you. These farms are often located near poor communities (cont)

(who also frequently happen to be communities of color), and they are subjected to having their air essentially poisoned by the waste that the farms discharge (one method of disposing of animal waste is by spraying it into the air). This subjects generations of these (cont)

communities to preventable respiratory illnesses and, as you can imagine, severely detracts from their quality of life. The farms get away with it because they are both wealthy and powerful, and these poor communities simply do not have the (cont)

financial means to move or take them to court over this.
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I hope you found this thread insightful and educational. Please do not let the struggles of these people go unacknowledged. Animal agriculture is wealthy and powerful, and the ways in which they (cont)

abuse this wealth and power is truly dystopian when you start looking into it, and it extends far beyond what I've covered in this thread. So remember this the next time you falsely accuse vegans of not caring about POC and workers. We do. Do you?