Erik Marcus is the publisher of Vegan.com and author of the groundbreaking new book Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money in which he lays the groundwork for new strategies to reduce animal suffering. MFA interviewed Erik to discuss some of these thought-provoking ideas.

In Meat Market, you write that “the effort to eliminate cruelty to animals should focus on agriculture.” Why do you believe this to be the case?

Add up all animals that suffer at human hands, and you’ll find that more than 97 percent are chickens, pigs, and cattle.* If you look at how the animal protection movement allocates its resources, it’s very clear that farmed animals don’t come anywhere close to receiving 97% of the movement’s attention and money. And yet, I think it’s clear that great progress could be won, if only the animal protection movement made farmed animals a priority.

You write about “Common Farming Exemptions.” Can you explain what these are?

About ten years ago, David Wolfson uncovered a wave of legislation that had recently been passed in a number of states. He termed this legislation “Common Farming Exemptions” (CFEs). These laws are all similarly worded and they share a single purpose: to exempt factory farms from animal cruelty laws. In states that have enacted CFEs, farmers can do practically anything they want with farmed animals and not have to worry about prosecution. So long as what they are doing is considered a common or customary farming practice, animal cruelty laws don’t apply. CFEs render the horrors of battery cages, veal crates, and gestation crates completely legal. Likewise, they allow cruel practices such as castration without anesthetic, beak searing, and the deliberate withholding of life-saving veterinary care. Right now, at least 30 states have CFEs on the books, and that number is growing. Factory farming is a horror show, and the industry knows it --- so they have gotten CFEs passed in order to evade prosecution.

In Meat Market, you describe in detail how organic dairies and free-range egg farms rely on killing animals to reduce costs. Can you provide a brief overview?

On today’s farms there is basically no such thing as a middle-aged hen or dairy cow. With each passing month, hens produce fewer eggs, and with each passing year, cows produce less milk. If there’s one thing animal agriculture is great at, it’s keeping track of the production of their animals and figuring out when yields have declined to the point that it’s time to send the hen or cow to slaughter and bring in a new animal. On a free-range egg farm or at an organic dairy, the animals might get better care than the animals at factory farms. But it’s clear that almost every single layer hen or dairy cow is destined for the slaughterhouse. You’ll never see a carton of free-range eggs, or a gallon of organic milk, with the label, “this product was produced without slaughter.” And the killing of cows and layer hens is only half the picture, we must also consider what happens to the males. Layer hens and dairy cattle are of different breeds than meat chickens and beef cattle. Every year in the United States, about 600 million chicks are hatched – half are females and half are unwanted males. The 300 million males are unceremoniously discarded upon hatching, since they cannot profitably be raised for meat. We don’t have good statistics on methods, but it appears the vast majority are ground up while still alive or tossed alive into garbage bags, where they smother. Likewise, the male offspring of dairy cows are not animals who can economically be used to produce beef. So, each year, about a million of them are slaughtered for veal. It’s weird --- free-range egg farms and organic dairies strive for this compassionate, folksy image. But the truth is that they are utterly complicit in the brutal killing of male chicks and the sale of dairy calves to veal farms.

You have been promoting the idea of creating a “dismantlement movement.” Can you briefly describe the concepts behind this?

In Meat Market, I divide the existing animal-protection efforts into three separate movements: vegetarian, animal rights, and animal welfare. I regard each of these movements as incredibly important for animal protection, and I certainly would never want to do or say anything that could weaken any of these movements. However, I believe that a fourth movement is needed --- one that is designed from the ground up to win massive change for farmed animals. The dismantlement movement I envision features a different style of rhetoric, and also employs a different set of organizing principles. Basically, we’re looking to construct the simplest and most persuasive arguments against animal agriculture, and to make sure that every high school and college student encounters these arguments before graduation. Meanwhile, we’re looking to identify major assets of animal agriculture that can be quickly and easily stripped away.

What types of campaigns would be incorporated into such a movement?

Meat Market contains eight guest essays written by some of today's best activists. One activist is working to get vegan foods into stadium concession stands, another is seeking to make our nation’s school lunch program more veggie friendly, and a third is working as an RD (Registered Dietitian) and continually fighting the influx of meat and dairy propaganda within her profession. There are countless ways that each of us can work to dismantle animal agriculture. A good starting point is to ask yourself what assets are held by industry that you might be able to help expose and strip away. Animal agriculture’s chief asset is the fact that most young people graduate from high school and college without ever being exposed to the cruelties of factory farming. This is something that I think could quickly be remedied. And outreach programs like those conducted by Mercy For Animals and Vegan Outreach are indisputably effective.

Can you describe how our readers might be able to become "millionaires?"

It’s nice to have a clear measure for success. And for more than 100 years, the term “millionaire” has been a great way to assess whether a person had achieved a high level of financial success. But instead of using the word in a financial sense, I use it to refer to people who’ve been extraordinarily successful in activism -- people who’ve saved at least a million animals from slaughter. If you're involved in outreach, every time you inspire a young person to become vegetarian, you're saving about 2,000 animals from slaughter.* Thus, activists who inspire 500 people to become vegetarian over the course of their lifetime will have helped save the lives of about one million animals. I think this "millionaire" concept can be useful and inspirational to activists. After all, the animals need us to shoot as high as we can, in terms of what we do to protect them.

Want to learn more about Erik’s work?
Check out his weekly half-hour podcast that you can subscribe to or download from Vegan.com. The shows contain everything from news commentary to cooking tips. Erik also frequently interviews many of the movers and shakers in the animal protection movement. Regularly listening to the show just might help inspire you to make activism a bigger part of your life.

^*Several of the figures mentioned above are understated because they do not include sea animals. For example, if one factors in the number of sea animals that are killed for food, the average vegetarian will save far more than 2,000 animals from being killed during a lifetime.

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