ABSTRACT
Animal agriculture is a leading cause of ecological toxicity, and prisons are toxic sites in multiple ways. Penitentiary-based agriculture is integral to penal regimes as it coalesces around land, labour, rehabilitation, as well as food production and supply. The 2010 closure of animal agriculture in Canadian federal institutions marks a small hiatus in an otherwise longstanding practice that pre-dates confederation. With the re-opening of two penitentiary farms as goat-dairies, I propose that we consider the carcerality of imprisonment and animal agriculture as a multi-species carceral practice with devastating environmental and relational impacts. I propose four tenets that render multi-species carcerality intelligible: colonial tactics of enclosure, de-animalization, alienated/exploitative labour, and toxicity and ontological constraint. By thinking together colonialism and anthropogenic climate change using the prison farm, I show that penal agribusiness is a racialized and colonial institution with social, political, and ecological ramifications exceeding the geographical constraints of the prison.
