ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the literature on animal victimization by providing an overview of animal abuse within the farming industry. It links cruelty to farm animals with features of the modern factory farm and slaughterhouse that are associated with abuse of workers. The chapter raises the question of whether the contemporary farming facility and slaugherhouse may themselves be criminogenic settings. Known as the customary farming exemption (CFE), state anti-cruelty laws essentially allow the farming industry to define 'the criminality of its own conduct'. The demands of the factory farming model of production require farmworkers to cease thinking about animals as living beings and to view them solely as things, allowing for the victimization of farm animals. Workers routinely suffer from serious and often life-threatening, job-related injuries, including cuts, amputations, swellings, rashes, blindness and asphyxiation. Removal of the CFE would also bring an end to industry-defined cruelty; without this legal loophole, a path is cleared for new humane standards for farm animals.
