by Monika Večeřová

In 2014, street artist Dan Witz placed 30 arresting pieces of pig and cow heads, chicken claws and monkeys behind bars in different locations around London’s area of Shoreditch. In the street exhibition called “Empty the Cages” Witz aimed at raising awareness about animal agriculture and abuse that animals endure in factory farming. As a born New Yorker, Witz’s interest in factory farming stemmed from the anti-whistleblower ag-gag (or agricultural gag) laws passing in the United States. The anti-whistleblower ag-gag legislation makes filming or photography of activity on farms without the owner’s consent illegal, and therefore limits the activity of undercover investigators, journalists and whistleblowers, i.e. people, often employees, revealing inside information which may have harmful effects on the company’s reputation if shared publicly.

By bringing his visual street project to London, Witz examined animal suffering in the U.S. factory farming as a layered problem of the countries of the Global North. The fact that we are legally permitted to abuse and harm farm animals unlike other animal species including domesticated cats and dogs or wild animals transgresses national boundaries. In September 2019, peaceful protestors in southern Alberta, Canada held a sit-in inside the Jumbo Valley turkey farm to end all commercial poultry operations in Canada. The first liberation protest ever organized in Alberta became known under the name “Liberation Lockdown”. One of the protest organizers, Trev Miller, argued that “as long as commercial turkey farms exist, there will be injustices and ways that animals are treated disrespectfully” (CBC News). The manager of the Jumbo Valley farm responded by saying that the farms are “fully regulated” and “follow all animal welfare and food safety standards” (CBC News) whereas advocate Francis Metivier wrote: “In the few hours we were in this barn we saw countless turkeys with diseases, tumours, missing feathers, damaged legs, not able to support their heavy body because they were bred to grow too fast, air quality was poor, that is why we had masks [sic] and many dead ones [sic] are found every day because of confinement and miserable conditions” (Metivier). However, the response of the former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney was to strengthen protection of farmers and their families against harassment from animal advocates by considering new laws against illegal trespassing and protestors whom he called “anti-farming militants” (CBC News). In November, the government passed Bill 27, a direct and very brisk response to Liberation Lockdown called the “Trespass Statutes (protecting Law-Abiding Property Owners) Amendment” aimed at prohibiting documentation of animal cruelty in the province. In the same year over 200 animal rights activists organized a lockdown in British Columbia, Canada called “Meat The Victims”, held outside and inside Excelsior Hog Farm to expose the reality of the animal industry and to challenge public views. In Quebec, 11 protestors entered a pig farm in Saint-Hyacinthe and live-streamed the conditions in which the pigs lived inside the barn – mired in muck and filth, mother pigs confined in crates with no place to move, let alone turn around. Here Quebec followed Alberta and Ontario not by improving conditions of farm animals but establishing a committee to make all trespassing on private property illegal and introduce similar ag-gag laws.

In November 2020, Prince Edward Island followed suit with two Bills (120 and 124); Bill 120 titled “The Animal Health Act” states that “no person shall, without lawful authority or excuse, enter a building or other enclosed place in which animals are kept knowing that or being reckless as to whether entering such a place could result in the exposure of the animals to a disease or toxic substance that is capable of affecting or contaminating them” (Henderson). There are severe fines for corporations and individuals with up to six months of imprisonment for any trespassers. Moreover, the wording of the bill seemingly presents animal welfare as the farming industry’s main concern and further highlights the myth about “humanely” treated “local”, “grass-fed” and “cage-free” animals. It is convenient to preserve the myth of humanely bred and humanely killed animals, with animal advocates legally placed in the position of acting against the law if the state legislation protects farmers by not installing cameras in facilities and by punishing trespassers who want to expose the real conditions on factory farms. Finally, in 2022, Canada Conservative MP John Barlow introduced Bill C-275, called the “Health of Animals Act” (Parliament of Canada) – a bill seconding PEI’s Bill 120 both in its title and description. Through the ag-gag state legislations, the public is further misled in a never-ending cycle of trusting an industry that relies on secrecy. If the industry’s and state policies declare that any contact of animals with people who are not the farm/slaughterhouse workers is harmful to the animals, there is no evidence of the actual harm and abuse that factory farm animals endure daily. This is due to inadequate policies and abusive treatment of both factory animals and factory workers, who often work in unhygienic conditions for minimum wage. Witz stresses this by saying that “there’s the merciless ways in which these deep-pocketed and powerful entities treat their employees, not to mention the local irreversible environmental damage. It’s truly unconscionable what these corporations get away with, day in and day out with seeming impunity” (PetaUK).

In 2014, California-based sculptor, professor and social activist Rocky Lewycky’s exhibition “Is It Necessary?” located at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History challenged the brutality of factory farming in the United States. Lewycky bases his work on reconstructing social barriers, paralleling Dan Witz’s exploration of what society hides from itself. “Is It Necessary?” presented an animal liberation project and combined sculpture, repetition and political commentary. It urged the viewers to rethink their direct participation in injustices of factory farming through their dietary standards and consumption of meat and dairy products. The work comprised of rows of hundreds of ceramic animals, including fish, pigs, cows, and turkeys, grouped according to the species and placed in tidy rows one after another and all colored in white paint on the outside and red paint on the inside. There is a sense of order and categorization to have all ceramic animals neatly lined up, suggesting the need of human species for control and domination of nonhuman animals. Every day when Lewycky entered Santa Cruz gallery, he selected one ceramic animal and smashed it, breaking the white animal body into red pieces which he then left in place as part of the installation. Suddenly, the red body parts of smashed ceramic animal shells contrasted with those animals still intact, making thus the violence visible to the audience. The animals, categorized into groups of fish, pigs, cows, and turkeys, were placed in a series of pallets on the floor with each pallet attributed one word written on the front; the pallets then spelled out: “Genocide: Is It Necessary?” During Lewycky’s exhibition, the audience had the opportunity to donate to Humane Farming Association; for every $50 donated, one life of a ceramic animal was spared. Consequently, Lewycky linked art with the animal liberation movement, which raised circa $1500 in total for HFA and which aimed at improving the lives of real life animals.

Lewycky’s art critiques the mass slaughter of farmed animals; according to the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) report from 2023 an estimated 92.2 billion land animals are kept and slaughtered annually in the global food system (Block). Lewycky sets an important example outside his 2014 Santa Cruz installation when he says that his “artwork is rooted in social activism, making a show that addresses issues of animal welfare [as] a natural, as well as critical progression” (Cronin). However, it is precisely animal welfare that is leaving a huge gap in how animal advocates demand animals to be treated (as sentient living beings) versus how corporations disregard the physical and psychological health of farm animals. Apart from the veterinarian way of medically declaring animals as healthy, we can also measure stress and stress-related factors negatively influencing animal wellbeing through their ability to pursue their species-specific behavior. For social animals like pigs, chickens and cows, their psychological health is determined by their autonomy, i.e. their ability to make their own choices and pursue their own interests (Knowing Animals).

In the Czech Republic, the worry of “contaminating” factory farm animals has been contested by investigative journalist Adéla Knapová, who in her work discloses breeding conditions on Czech factory farms from where the majority of population buys slaughtered animals, dairy and eggs. She accounts that in 2022, 5.5 million chickens, sows, rabbits, piglets and quails were caged in factory farms with 27 million farm animals bred in total, including sheep, cows and goats (Reflex). When Knapová contacted around 50 farms across the country for examination in 2022, apart from a single chicken farm, one half did not reply at all and the other half declined for supposedly security and hygienic reasons despite the State Veterinary Administration informing her there was no risk of contagion and therefore no reason for her being denied entry. Whilst she bought medical overalls and face masks for herself and the photographer, there was no security to monitor them during their whole visit, no employees wearing overalls or face masks, and the workers still kept kicking and beating the animals like no one was watching. She says that if inspectors came and saw the same as she did, half the farms would close, but inspections are always scheduled and inspectors monitor the same farms that they did in the past and which are then prepared better to face the inspectors’ practices. Consequently, the farms’ ability to meet state regulations appears to stem from the advance notice of inspections. Knapová visited many Czech factory farms prior to assess that this was not an isolated incident. Animal agriculture is one of the biggest industries and air polluters in the world, a business generating billions in subsidies which is systematically tied to commerce, plant-based production of animal feed, and logistics of whole countries. Knapová acknowledges the systemic exploitation of animals in animal agriculture and notes that “the businesses know they are doing the wrong thing, and when you do the wrong thing you can never justify it” (Zvířata nejíme).

The most recent example of chicken maltreatment on Czech factory farms is from March 2024 and published by OBRAZ (a Czech organization for protection and defense of animals) on their social media. The Czech Law “To Protect Animals against Cruelty”, approved by Czech National Council and not revised since 15 April 1992 (Zákony pro lidi), contains a number of exceptions which enable pain and physical and psychological harm afflicted on farm animals. Despite the law’s extensive and careful wording, which in theory forbids harm done to farm animals, the practices on Czech animal farms do not diverge from the rest of the world in terms of lack of transparency as well as the horrifying treatment of animals raised for slaughter. In the leaked footage of Czech food chain Albert, the viewers see recordings from three Czech chicken farms in Semtěš, Slavětice and Batelov. There, chickens are kept tightly in large halls where they are stepping over each other’s dead bodies, visibly over-bred and over-grown, unable to stand on their feet. These distressing conditions show chickens sold in Albert’s Czech stores under the brand of “Albertovo čerstvé” (“Albert’s fresh”). Together with images of cute, yellow-feathered fluffy chicks, it is Albert’s slogan – “We care about what you eat better. Our chicks are well taken care of. We keep a close eye on their local Czech production.” – that once again creates an idealized illusion of content animals humanely raised and slaughtered in a fairytale-like environment.

Albert has pushed back against the heavy criticism by arguing that the supplier also supplies to other food chains in the country, and by contacting the State Veterinary Administration to inspect the farm conditions closely. Nonetheless, the main criticism stems from the comparison between Albert’s stores based in the Czech Republic versus those in Belgium and the Netherlands (under the name Albert Heijn). The discrepancy between the countries is staggering; while in Belgium and the Netherlands, Albert has ended mass breeding in farm halls, the Czech production still relies on a fabricated and deceitful marketing campaign. Although Albert’s spokesperson does point out correctly that it is not the only food chain buying from this supplier (among others are Tesco and Kaufland), OBRAZ’s anti-“Albert’s fresh” project titled “Albert’s cruelty”, which the public can sign online, aims to convince Albert to stop selling battered chicken bodies and to accept the internationally recognized European Chicken Commitment (ECC) for “better breeding conditions” (RTVJ). Radim Trojan from OBRAZ adds that “they [chickens] live huddled on feces-soaked floors. They often have no access to water and food, have painful burns on their legs and abdomens, and suffer from a variety of illnesses. They are bred to grow as fast as possible. While alive their bones are broken because their young bodies cannot develop naturally” (RTVJ, my translation).

 In March 2024, Czech artist and bodybuilder Tomáš Prchal held a talk at Brno’s annual VeganFest event. Prchal, nicknamed “The Painter of Death”, uses his complex and multifaceted large paintings as a critique of false advertisement and the abusive practices farm animals are subjected to. Just as Lewycky, Prchal also incorporates the written word in his art in a form of arguments justifying the exploitation and killing of animals and critiquing veganism and Prchal as a vegan man.

Prchal says he must have written his “Karnismus” (“Carnism”) piece longer than he painted it. These stereotypical comments found in a majority of Prchal’s paintings are often barely noticeable due to the elaborate nature of form, symbols and multiple layers of paint; they include sayings such as “real men eat meat”, “vegans are infertile”, “children need meat”, “do you swallow?”, “men turn gay without meat”, “veganism is extreme”, “we kill them with respect and love” or “I only eat a little bit of meat”. In paintings called “Veselá kráva” (“Happy Cow”, 2021) and “Veselá jatka” (“Happy slaughter”, 2023) Prchal extrapolates the well-known image of a cow smiling on a package of cheese with a paralleled torturous depiction of a dying cow smeared in blood. He writes, “a happy cow is globally accepted propaganda of the current carnist ideology”, contradicting people saying they love animals while at the same time supporting “exploitation, rape, sexual abuse, taking calves away from their mothers, holding [animals] in confined spaces, stealing milk with robotic cow milkers and prematurely killing mothers and their children by millions in slaughterhouses every year in order to enjoy the taste of dairy products. These cows are of course happy because we see it in stores worldwide” (Prchal 2023, my translation).

Another painting called “Kastrace” (“Castration”, 2023) shows a male piglet screaming in pain and held down by two sets of human hands, one holding a scalpel near the piglet’s testicles, ready to cut them out without anaesthesia. This painful procedure is approved by EU regulations without pain relief if it is done within seven days after the piglet is born. The reason for castration that the farmers give is a specific odour of muscles of uncastrated males that originate from pheromones produced in the epididymides (Vincour). Prchal’s painting assesses the castration process, in which farmers use a scalpel to cut two incisions in the testicles and to push both testicles out through holes cut in the scrotum. One of the testicles is slightly pulled out to reveal the spermatic cord which is then cut off. The wound is neither sutured nor disinfected (Vincour). The piglets, while their trapped mothers nearby keep nervously bumping into their cages in a vain attempt to help them, are returned with the open wound and because the employees do not always perform this procedure according to hygienic standards, the animals then suffer with swellings full of pus. These must then be cut again and squeezed out without painkillers.

In the center of Prchal’s expansive artwork “Druhová nadřazenost” (“Speciesism”, 2020) there is a swastika symbol with four hands inside each of the four black arms of the symbol holding a captive bolt pistol used to stun animals before slaughter. For Prchal, racism and speciesism are equal in their immorality; the animal’s perception may be the same. The composition of the painting is dynamic because it is a never-ending cycle of killing (Prchal, VeganFest). Once animals are branded, they become numbers, which makes it easier to treat animals as things to justify their killing. To follow Lewycky’s sentiment about the political nature of his exhibition, the consumption of meat, dairy and eggs relates to a number of social and political issues that transgress boundaries of what it means to be a human vs. nonhuman animal. The meat and dairy industries are profitable businesses that supply our demand. Our response to animal agriculture becomes a reflection of our response to injustice; while we deny, ignore and rationalize systemic violence that we do not feel responsible for, as individuals we do have power to demand less abuse and corruption by making conscious choices.

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