Saving Animals: On sanctuary, care, ethics
I fell back into the kind of speciesism that I've been enculturated with growing up in North America, which was, I think I probably allowed myself to think in some way, like, that they're just mice. When you mentioned, like, if you saw the same thing being done in humans, could you witness in that way? And I I know for a fact that there's no way that I could stand there and watch or a bunch of other animals that I feel kind of more of a connection to.
Katie Gillespie:It might be just sort of being worn down by the kind of secondary trauma of being in these auctions and just wanting to get one animal out of that commodity circuit. What are the ethics around that, and is it sort of an anthropocentric idea that I oriented all around me and what I wanna support or not?
Elan Abrell:Hello. I'm Elon Abrol. I'm a cultural anthropologist, and I'm a current currently a visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Wesleyan University as well as an adjunct instructor in the animal studies master's program, and the anthropology department at New York University. I'm also vice president of programs with the Phoenix Zones Initiative. And my new book that just came out from University of Minnesota Press is Saving Animals, Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue and Care.
Elan Abrell:And this is an, comparative ethnography of animal sanctuaries across The United States where I look at the physical, material, ethical, and political economic challenges of caring for rescued animals in different contexts. And I am being joined today by Katie Gillespie, my favorite animal ethnographer.
Katie Gillespie:Thanks, Elon. Yes. I'm Katie Gillespie. I am so delighted to to be here with you, Elon. I'm a a geographer by training.
Katie Gillespie:I, teach currently as a postdoctoral fellow in the applied environmental and sustainability studies program at the University of Kentucky. It's an online master's program. My interests have really long been in in animal studies and in thinking about the sort of individual experiences and lives of, of nonhuman animals, specifically, those those species who are farmed. And so my my first book was the cow with ear tag thirteen eighty nine. It's a it's a book about the lives of cows in the dairy industry and and the sort of everyday forms of violence that they experience, in the production of dairy.
Katie Gillespie:And as part of that, small part of that that work, I did look at cows who are living in sanctuary. So Elana and I have some overlapping interests in sort of how how animals' lives unfold and are sort of made and remade in in sanctuaries. So, yeah, I'm really happy to to be here. And, oh, and I also just wanna say that this this book is incredible. It's incredibly important, for the the field of animal studies, for anthropology, for multispecies ethnography, as a as a sort of growing methodological field.
Katie Gillespie:And I think it's just it's so unique, in what it offers. I there I was just thinking about it this morning as I was finishing up the conclusion. There's really nothing like it. And so it's it's, you've written just a beautiful book, a beautiful story of these different sanctuaries and, a really important resource for us in the the field of sort of thinking about human animal relations. So I just wanted to compliment you on on that and say how much the book means to me and how much I know it's gonna mean to to so many other people.
Elan Abrell:Thank you. That's that's very nice. And I feel the same way about your book. I wouldn't I don't wanna sound like I'm repeating you, but I I had your book as an inspiration, unfortunately, because it came out a few years before mine. So
Katie Gillespie:Thank you. Yeah. So I just I wanted to, hear if you would be willing to talk a little bit about just sort of what your motivation was for studying sanctuary, sort of what the importance of of this particular, focus, was? I know that when you've, you know, first started this project, there was virtually nothing out there on sanctuaries, in the sort of academic scholarship realm.
Elan Abrell:Yeah. I was in this grad school limbo for trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a project. I had kind of abandoned a a project that didn't have anything to do with animals and was asking myself what would be something really inspiring to focus my research on. And around the same time that I was going through this mini existential crisis, my very close friend who is a cat named Ponza, who had I'd lived with since he was born in my linen closet in college and followed me around everywhere I went in grad school and all over the country. He was going through some pretty serious medical issues and, was requiring very expensive surgeries.
Elan Abrell:And I was telling a friend about it in my grad program, and he was shocked that I would pay thousands of dollars for my cat surgery. He just stared at me, dumbstruck, and said, why wouldn't you just put him to sleep and get a new cat? And my immediate reaction was, that's stupid. What a terrible thing to say. But the more that I thought about it, the more that I started to consider that, like, well, this is, like, actually a perspective that's out there that exists, and it's a question that people who are concerned with animals ask themselves in various ways, I think, all the time, especially people involved in animal activism.
Elan Abrell:Like, how how can you get people to think about and value nonhuman animals as beings who are who you would never consider just killing and replacing, but instead you would treat like a family member. So I started wondering how could I potentially turn this into a research project exploring this question of how people value animals differently. And from there, I thought that it would be interesting to explore instead of why don't people care about animals, for example, like, go into a lot of settings of, sort of institutionalized violence against animals. I couldn't think of anything that really delved into questions around why people do care about animals. And I started thinking about where can I go and find people who really prioritize that relationship?
Elan Abrell:And I thought of animal sanctuaries immediately as places where people not only really care about animals, but they actually dedicate their their lives, like their livelihood to going every day and and caring for rescued animals and trying to give them better lives. And so that seemed like the perfect site. And then also, another graduate student had said something to me about, like, if you're gonna travel for field work, you should go somewhere where there's beaches, like like a tropical island so that you can enjoy the weather all the time. And I realized that for for me, hanging out at sanctuaries would sort of be the equivalent of that because I would get to spend tons of time around animals. I was hoping, which turned out to be the case.
Elan Abrell:And so I sort of went into it with the primary research question being what what motivates people to commit their lives to caring for animals, which quickly blossomed into a whole bunch of other questions about sort of the challenges of doing the sanctuary project within this bigger system of animal exploitation that we all still live in and, sort of ethical conundrums of trying to decide how to care for animals in the best way possible while also affording them the most agency and freedom to be themselves possible and and all sort of the challenges that that come along with that. And I realized by the when I was done with the book that I kind of never really got too into the question of what motivates people to kiss despite their lives waiting at sanctuaries. I mean, I did get I did have a lot of interesting conversations around that, but I ended up that was just sort of the, spark that got the rest of it going.
Katie Gillespie:Well, it's and it's interesting what you say about how animals are are valued or or not, how they're valued differently. Like, your colleague I had a similar experience. We used to live with chickens. And when one of the chickens, Emily, was five, she got ovarian cancer. And we, you know, gave her, like, all of the veterinary care that she needed, and my dad was just horrified.
Katie Gillespie:He was like, what? You can buy another chick for a dollar 75 at the feed store. Like, why would you spend that much? And I think that, you know, I I know we've talked in the past about effective altruist, perspective about where money is best spent in sort of addressing animal issues, and then also just sort of more broadly, you know, society thinking that that certain animals matter or or valued more. I it seems like that's really a challenge that that sanctuaries are up against in terms of, you know, justifying their work even to people within the broader sort of animal advocacy movement.
Katie Gillespie:Is that was that something that came up at all in in your research, just sort of the challenge of of of sanctuaries to make that case?
Elan Abrell:Yeah. It is. It's a it's a concern that has been expanding for people who do sanctuary work over the last few years as that sort of approach to animal activism and animal protection work has become a more influential perspective that you can sort of quantify the outcome of dollars put into reach resources put into certain causes and and what the effects are and say, you know, trying to measure the metrics of of vegan advocacy, for example, and stuff. And so I did see people I I spoke to to people who worked at sanctuaries who were concerned about the idea that sanctuaries were gonna be increasingly framed as not a good place to give your donor dollars to because it's not gonna have an impact and, like, how to respond to that idea. I don't think I wrote about this in the book, but I remember one colleague and friend at a at a sanctuary trying to create a survey to measure people visitors' responses after leaving the sanctuary who who would decide to change their dietary habits and and go vegan or go vegetarian so that they could sort of, like, come up with some of those metrics to sort of respond to that system of assessment.
Elan Abrell:So, yeah, I did see some of that concern, but it didn't seem to to be the focus of of people's work. But one of the things that I try to address in the book is that critique of the mission of sanctuaries is not really being worth the money that donors might put into it because billions of animals are killed every year for animal agriculture alone. And if you factor in sea life, then that's trillions. And so just the sheer overwhelming magnitude of lives lost every year, the number of animals that are saved by sanctuaries are statistically insignificant, not even like a drop in the bucket. And it's hard to prove some kind of real impact on structural change coming out of sanctuary work where most of it is focused predominantly on caring for animals that are rescued from various situations of exploitation and violence.
Elan Abrell:Sanctuaries also, as I as I discussed in the book, have this really important mission of educating the public about the mistreatment of animals and the exploitation of animals in these systems of violence and how, you know, changing our behavior can can help to influence those systems. But, again, it's difficult to measure some kind of direct impact on structural change in the immediate sense through the work that sanctuaries are doing. But what I believe and what I write about in the book and I think is really important is that sanctuaries are, one hand, modeling a different way of valuing animals, like, that we were just discussing at the beginning of this conversation In the sense that there are examples that are out there and they're proliferating, there's more and more sanctuaries every year, of people dedicating their lives to care for rescued animals. You you can't remedy the harm that's already been done to the animals that are rescued, but to, like, undo those relationships of violence and exploitation and and create alternative ways of living with other species. And I think as a cultural anthropologist that although it's hard to quantify the impact on cultural change, that it's definitely playing a role in cultural change, and that's something that is very important long term.
Elan Abrell:The sanctuaries are doing really important, you could almost say pragmatic work of figuring out how to live with and care for other species. Unfortunately, I think that we're heading into a future in which a lot of species are probably not going to be able to live at all if it's not in close proximity to animals. Sanctuaries are doing really important kind of work in in figuring out how to best live with and care for other animals. And so, like, for, you know, for farmed animal sanctuaries, this can mean things like inventing whole new bodies of veterinary medicine to care for geriatric farm animals that didn't, you know, have any real institutional knowledge about, like, the problems that they might face as they get older, let alone, like, how to treat them and respond to them. Or, you know, new things about the ways that certain species could live together and share spaces together that ethologists and other people weren't aware of because they they haven't been put into close proximity before.
Elan Abrell:And I'm curious to know, like, in your experience with sanctuaries, did you see anything like that as far as the the concern for sort of the way that their work is valued in the broader animal protection movement or in the public at large?
Katie Gillespie:I was just thinking when you were talking about these, like, cultural shifts and the way that there are these, like, I don't know if you call them, like, utilitarian calculations about the sort of value of supporting different different things or different animals' lives. It it's just how really hard it is to sort of undo the way that that animals are valued and undo the way we we think about different forms of value, being attached to to animals and and especially sort of undoing the ways that that animals are sort of economically valued and commodified and exchanged. And I've been thinking a lot about that lately because I've been doing some field work at some farmed animal auctions, again, over the last month or so. It's something I, did some research on for the, dairy book, but, I'm I've been returning to those auctions, and I've been going to, like, so called poultry auctions recently. And that question of value is so sort of clearly articulated even more so in than in other farmed animal auctions in this, like, this this so called poultry auction where, chickens and ducks and geese and turkeys, and quail and game, hens are all auctioned off sort of in this really quick succession, sometimes, like, multiple sales per minute.
Katie Gillespie:And they come in in cardboard boxes, into the auction ring, and the birds are all sort of pulled out by their wings and held up and auctioned off. And sitting there, I mean, it's such a I've always thought the auction is so interesting because it's a space of, like, really understanding the commodification of animals and, like, these really calculated assignments of monetary value to animals' lives and and bodies and the condition of their bodies and their reproductive functions and all of that help to define those forms of value. At these particular auctions, the birds were selling for, you know, like, young rooster for a dollar or a laying hen for $14 or, rabbits also were showed up at that auction. I don't know why they're sort of considered like, poultry, although, I guess, legally, they fall into that category of, like, nonprotections, for like, in the humane methods of livestock slaughter act, for instance. They're lumped in with, like, fish and birds in terms of not being protected in farmed farmed in, like, agricultural settings.
Katie Gillespie:So anyway, they're rabbits but, you know, a rabbit sells for $4. And I just I'm sitting there and I'm like, gosh. That's so cheap. Like, these prices are so cheap. And then and that was really striking to me.
Katie Gillespie:And then, you know, thinking like $4 for someone's entire life. But then I get home, and I'm like, what price would would I think was adequate? And and there isn't one. And having thought critically about these relationships for so long, like, being an animal studies person going into these spaces, there still was, like, this fundamental, like, instinct that I had to, like, attach a different level of monetary value to an animal. How we can undo, like, these really deeply ingrained ideas about animals, that animals are sites of consumption, whether it's eating or whether it's entertainment or even in sanctuaries where they're, sort of these ambassador type stories to to be consumed by supporters, that there's just this, like, sort of these underlying logics or just ingrained sensibilities about about animals value that I think, like, as you say, the work of sanctuaries is in large part trying to to undo and to imagine different lives.
Katie Gillespie:As you said, that manifests in different ways. Like, I think that I'm super fascinated by the whole veterinary knowledge that's developed in sanctuaries. And, I don't know if that came like, I'd love to hear more about, like, how that came up in your in your research. I've been working with Pigs Peace Sanctuary here in Washington for, about ten years volunteering and teaching there and researching and and that kind of stuff. And and Judy, the director, has really talked about having to work with large animal veterinarians who are sort of amenable to working collaboratively with her.
Katie Gillespie:She has no formal veterinary training, but she has an incredible amount of animal led care knowledge that she's learned just sort of in practice. You know, it's hard to find a vet who is amenable to building knowledge together with someone who doesn't have veterinary training. She's found a couple of vets over the years, but it just seems like such an area of, I don't know, enormous possibility and fraught stuff going on.
Elan Abrell:That's really interesting. As you were talking, I realized that a lot of the people that I met who were working at sanctuaries full time didn't have veterinary training, or they developed it through their work at the sanctuaries. It reminded me a little bit of communities in, like, human health world, people with chronic diseases or disabilities that there isn't widely accessible well known medical knowledge and treatment for so that the communities form around people sharing the medical knowledge with each other and and kind of becoming experts in their own condition so that they can live better quality of life. It is through both partnerships with veterinarians like you were just describing who, like, might not have expertise in certain kinds of animals or maybe they're farm veterinarians. And so they do have expertise in the species, but not in treating the conditions that come along with a a 10 year old pig because every pig that they treat is less than one year old, and and they only treat a few things and whatever it is that to get the pig to slaughter.
Elan Abrell:It's not to improve the pig's quality of life or to help the pig have a long life. And so, you know, there's certain conditions that don't even need to be treated because they will become irrelevant once the the very young pig is killed or the very young cow is killed. And so I think there's sort of a coproduction and partnership with certain veterinarians who are really open and interested in that kind of knowledge development. So there are several farmed animal sanctuaries or sanctuaries for formerly farmed animals in the sort of New York, New England region that I know have done work with Cornell Vet School and and collaborated with them. So, like, Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York.
Elan Abrell:You know, they partnered with with the vet school a long time ago and have done a lot of work in in figuring out the best nutritional makeup for food for certain species and how to treat, different kinds of problems that they realized were were quite common to industrially farmed animals because of the, you know, the pressures of rapid growth and weight gain on joints and bones or because of hens that are bred to lay eggs or producing eggs so constantly that that they're more prone to all kinds of reproductive tract problems and how to treat those conditions. I was at a a sanctuary for, quote, unquote, exotic animals, animals that would either, well, the sanctuary where I did my field work, pretty much all the the animals were probably kept by other people as sort of exotic pets. None of them were coming directly from the entertainment industry, but, those kind of sanctuaries also take in animals from from that are used in the entertainment industry and other context. But there were some flamingos at this sanctuary, and the woman who ran the sanctuary did a research paper on the use of noise to calm certain birds because she had a sort of thesis that flamingos live in the wild in flocks of thousands of birds.
Elan Abrell:So their their norm is like a cacophony of calls all the time. And so she had this sort of theory that actually calm and quiet might be disturbing to birds. And so she when they were having to give them treatment for minor things that they needed that treatment for, she was playing recordings of flamingos, and and she found that it was, like it seemed to be calming, and and the birds were more relaxed.
Katie Gillespie:Oh, that's super interesting.
Elan Abrell:Yeah. And she ran a whole veterinary internship program too with vet students to give from the vet students I spoke to, you don't get a lot of opportunity to do hands on treatment for most of the years of your vet school training. And so this sort of students could come and do sort of summer internships and and get access to learning about species that they might never really have the opportunity to learn about in vet school. I have often thought that it would be a very interesting ethnography or research project for somebody to explore that that whole development of this this field of sanctuary, veterinary medicine, whether it's, like, through a sort of science and technology studies approach or, you know, cultural geography or cultural anthropology. I think there's, like, a a whole other ethnography to be written there.
Elan Abrell:I wanted to loop back to two questions that came up for me when you were describing the auctions. This idea of value and how it is locked into these frameworks and and something I think about in the book a fair amount is sort of the challenges of trying to create this space where animals are treated as subjects with rights, with agency who get to exercise their agency and trying to give them the best lives possible. But in a sense, it's like a bubble in a much bigger space that is entirely founded on and and intricately, like, interwoven with exploitation of animals in all kinds of ways and violence against animals in all kinds of ways. And how sort of the political economy of that bigger system puts pressure on the sanctuaries in in all kinds of ways. Like, you can't, you know, you can't buy animal feed for certain species of farmed animals without contributing to companies that may basically exist as part of that profit system off of animal agriculture and and so on.
Elan Abrell:Not to I'm not saying that it's, like, a criticism of sanctuaries, but in any way, just that, like, it's not possible to fully extricate yourself from that political economy, especially if you're going to be doing regular care of animals. In that sense, I've tried to think about, like, how to navigate that, how to rupture that system. But then as you were talking about just the way that that it can, you know, worm its way into your thinking, there are these moments of rupture for, I think, people who are even fully involved in those systems of value production uncritically. So I'm thinking of of farmers or people who are doing agricultural work. Like, so this is the question for you because I imagine this is what happens, but I didn't actually get to talk.
Elan Abrell:There's people I write about in my book who are I never spoke to or saw. They're at certain points where animals could be rescued, and they made decisions that led to animals being rescued. And so one, for example, is a dairy cow or or a calf who was born at a dairy farm who, broke one of her legs. And somebody who worked at the dairy facility, instead of deciding to kill her or euthanize her, gave her to somebody who they thought could care for her, who turned out wasn't able to adequately care for her and and eventually gave her to the sanctuary. You know, it sort of do this thought experiment where I think about what might that person at the dairy farm have felt when they looked at this cow that, maybe ninety ninety nine times out of a hundred, you think of as primarily a source of value production and, you know, a waste of resources to not just euthanize and move on, but instead decide this cow should be rescued and cared for.
Elan Abrell:So by whether it's just taking pity or whether it's actually a moment of exercising empathy, and I'm fascinated by that possibility of what's going on there.
Katie Gillespie:Well, I immediately, I think about I was able to visit one dairy farm, only one, because no other farms would agree. And the farmer there, he was, gosh, he was probably in his seventies and had been in dairy farming his whole his whole life. Grew up in the Midwest and then moved out here. You know, I we talked for a long time, and he showed me around the farm. And, you know, I, there were no calves at the farm.
Katie Gillespie:It was all cows who are actively, you know, being milked. And so we just talked about this, you know, process of, like, annual impregnation that cows raised for dairy undergo, and then, you know, immediately following their giving birth, the calves are, are removed so that that milk can be diverted into the market. You know, I was asking him about, you know, when do you take the calves away? Like, what do you think about that kind of thing? And, he said that they try to take them away as quickly as possible because the trauma of separation is much worse the longer they're allowed to to be together.
Katie Gillespie:And, you know, he said as it is, like, you know, they'll the, you know, mother cows will, you know, bellow for up to, you know, a couple of weeks or more, for their calves. And, you know, he was really moved and, you know, upset by that. And, you know, it was it was clear that he felt conflicted and also emotional about that. So, you know, when when you were talking about what motivates, for instance, a farmer to, you know, try to find another home for that cow with the the broken leg versus just, killing her, I can imagine I don't know what what they were thinking, but I can imagine that that that does come from a place of empathy and a sort of recognition of the, you know, hardships that cows undergo in all these different ways in farming. I don't think that farmers are insensitive to those things entirely.
Katie Gillespie:And so, you know, I do I I could see that as a moment of empathy. And also in the sense of, as you said, it's like, you know, 99.999 whatever percent of cows in, you know, the industry don't get that kind of rerouting into a rescue context. And so maybe in the same way that sanctuaries or maybe not the same way, but in a similar way that sanctuaries think about, you know, the value of of of giving one animal in billions a different life. You know, maybe that same kind of motivation was there, you know, for that farmer and, like, you know, yes. I'm all these cows are gonna be caught up in this industry and then go to slaughter, but I could you know, this one could could have a different life.
Katie Gillespie:I don't know. That that was one thing, you know, I was thinking about when you were talking. But then the the other like, just on the auction question, I mean, yeah, there were the the cow with year tag 1389 who the book is named for, she was, you know, so called spent dairy cow who collapsed in the auction ring as she was being being auctioned. Nobody bid on her. The bidding went all the way down to $35, and no one bid.
Katie Gillespie:She she collapsed in the ring and then and then was they kept auctioning cows around her, and then she finally was able to stand and, and move out of the ring. But then, she died at the auction that night. And, you know, I felt really conflicted in that moment about nobody's bidding. Like, should I buy her? And then that night, just like, you know, I had nightmares about her and called the next called the auction the next morning to find out, like, you know, could I still buy her?
Katie Gillespie:And and they said told me that she had died. But, you know, I think that I've been thinking a lot about the the auction and the practice or not of buying animals as, like, a form of potential, like, potentially framed as rescue. I know you know, I've always taken the position that, you know, I'm not gonna support the industry in any way by giving money to, you know, to an auction yard, and sort of entering into that, you know, economic system of exchange, that commodifies animal life. It might be just sort of being worn down by the kinda secondary trauma of being in these auctions and just wanting to get one animal out of that commodity circuit. But, you know, I I've been thinking lately, like, it an animal, I think, would wanna be purchased for $35 if it meant, you know, being able to go to sanctuary instead of getting slaughtered or enrolled in a sort of milk commodity circuit.
Katie Gillespie:And so I don't know. I've just it's that that sort of veers, I think, away from your question a bit. It's just it that's something I've been thinking about lately is just like, yeah. What are the ethics around around that? And is it sort of an anthropocentric idea that I like, oriented all around me and what I wanna support or not that I would say, like, oh, I'm not gonna purchase, you know, an animal who's collapsed or who's in really bad shape.
Katie Gillespie:And then if you were to do that, why them and not every other animal going through?
Elan Abrell:Yeah. I had a a similar experience. When the only time my research brought me into a context where I was really witnessing violence against animals. Like, I write about the one sanctuary where there were captive wildlife killing of mice and chickens in order to feed raptors, and there was killing of predators that would come on to the property as a sort of protection or predator control plan was what it was called for. They were trapping and shooting mongooses.
Elan Abrell:But, the one time that I I really, like, sort of saw violence in front of me and and felt that sort of sense of I want to save this animal, but I can't unless I pay for the animal was, at a Kapooros festival in New York where I saw chickens that were being used in the Kaporoz ritual and then slaughtered or their necks were cut afterwards, and they were thrown in a garbage bag. And I remember, seeing that and feeling this sort of sense of anguish inside the, like, torn between this idea. Should I and I and I knew some activists who were there who were buying chickens. They said that they had bought some chickens in order to rescue them. And going in with that preconceived idea of just like you that I like, oh, I'm not going to pay into the system of animal exploitation, but then wondering, well, could I I could have saved a few chickens for a few dollars, and should I have?
Elan Abrell:Which leads to the question the other question I wanted to ask about the auction, which which your answer set up really well is I know this is something that you've thought about a lot. You edited co edited a whole book on witnessing and and research, and I have a a chapter in there where I write about the mongoose experience that I had. And so I'm sort of wondering, like, how you and maybe there's no great answer to this, but how you deal with that secondary trauma as, like, a part of your research. Does it help to have these frameworks in advance?
Katie Gillespie:Well, I was just thinking about that the other day because I was writing up some stuff on the the bird auctions. And so I, yeah, I have this sort of framework going in. I'm not gonna buy anyone. You know, I'm, just gonna sort of sit there and observe. But even in the auction, like, it you know, I was thinking about how I just, like, keep going through those familiar grooves in my brain of, like, that circuit of thinking.
Katie Gillespie:You know? Can I buy this animal? Is you know, what are the ethics around that? Like, it's like, I I it feels really unresolved still even though I've sort of created this kind of boundaries around what I will and won't do. I mean, there's also the issue of what would I do with that animal if I bought them.
Katie Gillespie:And I think, you know, a lot of people get so caught up in the moment and buy or rescue an animal to, like, give them a different life, and they're not planning to take on the care of that animal. You know? They're an animal who needs to, you know, be in a sanctuary setting, for instance. And so then it puts this burden on sanctuaries to take in this animal that maybe felt that maybe made that person feel good to to rescue, but then it it sort of put it can put sanctuaries in a in a difficult position as well. So I don't know.
Katie Gillespie:I mean, I actually the last auction I went to, I've never registered for a bidding number before, but I registered for a number just to see what that process was like. And that made it even harder to not bid because I had this, like, paper number right there in my lap. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think that, what was your question a lot?
Elan Abrell:Oh, how you yeah. How you not not just necessarily with the do you bid or do you not bid, but in general, in in research where you're around animal suffering that you could theoretically try to intervene in. I mean, there are circumstances where, you know, if you're doing field work at a slaughterhouse and you decided to try to stop the slaughter line, you might derail it. You might be able to do that and you would get thrown out and it would go back to normal. Or you could start bidding hundred dollars for every chicken and and, like, blow up the auction, but they'll probably kick you out, and that'd be the end of the auction.
Elan Abrell:But so, like, there's, of course, pragmatic limits on what you could do in any situation as a researcher, but you're also often as a researcher in context where you're not you're not trying to disrupt what's going on because you're trying to understand it so you can help other people understand it. How do you navigate that, like, emotionally? Like, how do you not let that secondary trauma drive you away from the research maybe?
Katie Gillespie:So I've been thinking about it, as you said, like, in terms of of witnessing, and I've been thinking about witnessing as, like, its own method sort of distinct from observation, or participant observation or sort of more typical kind of qualitative observational methods. Because, you know, I think that sort of witnessing implies a sort of political or, like, politicized orientation to what you're observing and a sort of recognition that that what's going on in front of you is, you know, potentially really problematic is, you know, these sort of forms of violence and trauma to the the animals you're witnessing. And so that there's value perhaps in in just that act of witnessing that then gets converted into something that becomes, like, you know, shared and educational. One of the things that concerns me about witnessing, in human context, the importance of witnessing has been important in so many different contexts of human violence and genocide and, you know, various points in history and and in contemporary times. But I've been thinking about in the context of animals, you know, witnessing violence.
Katie Gillespie:Like, I wonder, would you know, is there a sort of implicit, like, anthropocentrism in saying that it's okay to just sit there and witness, you know, in a slaughterhouse animals being killed? Like or, you know, would there be a different expectation, for instance, if someone who you were witnessing experienced violence, if that if that someone were human? And so I think, you know, like, that's been troubling to me in terms of, you know, inhabiting these, you know, spaces of violence against animals as a witness. I mean, witnessing implies, like, not really being able to do anything active in the moment to change the conditions. But you're right.
Katie Gillespie:You could I mean, you could. You could bid a hundred dollars for each chicken, and all of those chickens would not be slaughtered. You know? You could stop the slaughter line in the, you know, slaughterhouse, and, well, they would probably just pick up the slaughter line again. It's troubling and fraught, the this practice of witnessing.
Katie Gillespie:And it's also hard. You know? It's depressing. And it this last, last auction I went to, I showed up, and it's like the bird auction was early in the day, and then the, other farmed animals are later in the day. And so all those animals are being delivered in the back of the auction yard while the bird auction is unfolding.
Katie Gillespie:So you can go back and walk, you know, through the pens and see all the animals who we sold later. And this last time, there were probably 15 or 16 calves, you know, newborn calves, from all different farms who, you know, still held their umbilical cords attached. They were all in this pen, you know, and they were just, crying, you know. And it was just like this, like, persistent cries of these calves. And, you know, I walked up to the edge of their pen, and they you know, I sort of put my hand out, and they crowded crowded around and, like, were, like, desperately trying to, like, suckle my hand because they were looking for their mom.
Katie Gillespie:They were hungry. And, you know, it's like anything that they could sort of suckle on. And there just this moment of, like, panic of, like, I don't you know, this is so horrible. I don't know. It's a lot of helplessness, I guess, and hopelessness.
Elan Abrell:Yeah. I mean, I think about my own experience, you know, witnessing mice being killed for to be fed to raptors. And I think that the mice were being killed probably as humanely as one could. Then they were sort of quickly snapping the mouse mice's necks with our fingers. And, then they would just they were dead, and they were they their bodies were fed to the raptors.
Elan Abrell:But I think that, like, at the time, I sort of told myself, I'm gonna I'm I came here to observe and understand how things are going here, not to come in and that I I really like that idea of witnessing as different than participant observation. And if I were to look back on it, I would say I was witnessing, but trying to tell myself I'm just participant observing and I'm not gonna get involved emotionally here. I got invited in. And, of course, this is like how other animals are going to eat. Like, I don't know what else the captive raptors could have eaten that wouldn't have also involved animals being killed.
Elan Abrell:It's their diet. They're carnivores. So I told myself that as well, and I thought, well, you know, this is seems to be being done in the most humane way possible, and it's necessary for the raptors, and I'm just here to observe. And so that's how I will sort of stomach this uncomfortable feeling of being around animals that are getting killed that I don't want to see happen. But if I'm totally honest, I think a part of the way that now that I look back on it, the other part of my crutch that I used to kind of get through that is, I fell back into the kind of speciesism that I've been enculturated with growing up in South America, which was I think I probably allowed myself to think in some way, and I could they're just mice.
Elan Abrell:Because when you when you mentioned, like, if you saw the same thing being done in humans, could you witness in that way? And I and I'm pretty positive that I couldn't. I'm I mean, I'm not pretty positive. I know for a fact that there's no way that I could stand there and watch. And I kind of doubt that I could do it for dogs or a bunch of other animals that I feel kind of more of a connection to emotionally with that, like, without really thinking about it on a subconscious level.
Elan Abrell:It this goes all the way back to the beginning, I think, of our when we're talking about those value systems that are just kind of, like, really ingrained. It was easy to think to myself, well, they're just that it is just my so I'm not gonna think about it beyond this. It was like a momentary thought that I pushed aside, but I think it was there.
Katie Gillespie:Well and I I was really struck by that description in your book partly because because the number of mice, I think, probably made a difference and and, like, abstracting nature of, like, numbers. So there were a lot of mice that they were hard to sort of individuate that, you know, you talk about the mouse with only one eye who you sort of surreptitiously slipped back into the group who would have been, you know, killed because I mean, I thought that was really interesting the way that they were sort of practicing this, like, eugenics, what would you call it, sort of calling of mice with tumors or the the mouse with one eye. And, and that that really then you were I mean, I don't know if I'd say, like, punish necessarily, but there were impacts for you in terms of your participation or access to that space once you let them know that you had slipped that one eyed mouse back in the thing. Right? So there was sort of a penalty for sort of seeing this this animal as an individual.
Elan Abrell:Yeah. That's that's right. That that is an aspect that I hadn't fully considered. I mean, yeah, they had this system of deciding which mice to call based on things like tumors or illnesses and stuff, and, I disrupted the system by not flagging a mouse that otherwise would have been identified for being killed and fed to the raptors and then got, yeah, totally removed from mouse care duty entirely.
Katie Gillespie:Was that the same sanctuary where you freed the the mongoose?
Elan Abrell:It was.
Katie Gillespie:So you were just causing all kinds of trouble?
Elan Abrell:Yeah. So I didn't write that's not in the book. That is something that I I kept to myself until I wrote about it for for your book, Lulnerable Witness. But,
Katie Gillespie:Is that okay to bring that up?
Elan Abrell:Yeah. I mean, it's I'm it's published.
Katie Gillespie:It's published.
Elan Abrell:It's not a secret. So, no. But I thought well, that was, like, what really made me think about this issue is because mongooses are invasive species in Hawaii, and and they do eat birds, and they are kind of just a ongoing problem animal in quotation marks that on at least some of the islands of Hawaii. And so they would come into the sanctuary sometimes, and there were birds there were birds that lived on the ground at the sanctuary that were at risk of attack by mongooses. The state required that the sanctuary have a predator control plan in place because they also had some endangered species there that were, like, injured Hawaiian birds.
Elan Abrell:But they fell under, like, rules about preserving Hawaiian wildlife, so they had to have a predator control plan under state law. And, they had a a live trap to catch mongooses, and then if they did catch a mongoose, they would shoot the mongoose to, kill it quickly. And I was sort of telling myself that framework of like, I am a researcher. I'm not going to intervene and disrupt the mice process and all of this. But when I was walking at the back of the property and I saw the mongoose in the cage, I suddenly felt stuck in this moment of whatever I do is going to be a choice that's gonna impact the mongoose.
Elan Abrell:Either I'm gonna say nothing, and the mongoose is gonna stay there in that cage. The mongoose looked really disturbed by the experience that, she or he was pacing and hissing and looked very, very nervous. And so I thought, you know, she let's say she might be there for who knows how long. If I say something, she'll be killed or I could let her go. But then that would put potentially other animals at risk too, which is was running across my mind is that this is to protect the animals that live at the sanctuary.
Elan Abrell:Ultimately, the framework that I was using snapped, And I just it's like I saw this mongoose, and I felt like I have to help her. And I just opened the door and let her go. And the next day, I heard that a mongoose had been caught and shot, and I assume it was maybe the same mongoose. I think a couple more over the the few days were caught and shot. And as I wrote about in that chapter and as I reflected on, I think in the end, it gave me sort of an interesting it it it actually worked as a sort of participant observation because one of my other coworkers, who is a volunteer there, did the killing on the first day that the mongoose was we caught.
Elan Abrell:And he was really troubled by it and decided that he couldn't do it anymore. And then he told me about it, how he was I didn't I hadn't told him that I had done that, but he told me that he was just not gonna participate in shooting the mongooses anymore, that it didn't feel right. And so I thought, in the end, giving into this I I don't I don't wanna say moral imperative necessarily. I mean, it felt like a moral imperative to me, but I I wasn't actually going through a abstract thought process of, like, what's the most ethical thing to do here? I think I was reacting way more out of a, I think, empathy for the mongoose and just like, I don't I wanna help this animal who looks like she's in trouble.
Elan Abrell:I think having gone through that experience kind of gave me insight into what he was struggling with in a way that if I had stayed removed, if I hadn't intervened at all, if I tried to avoid looking at the mongoose traps, which is actually what I ended up doing for the rest of the time that I was there as I tried to stay away from where the mongoose traps were so I wasn't in the same situation again, Then I don't think I would have had that firsthand experience of he made a different decision than I did, but in the end, we both kind of came out of it feeling really uncomfortable about the process. So then after that, I've thought a lot about what what do you do in those situations? And, you know, I'm sort of in awe of researchers like you and other people who have done research on animals that are in situations like what you just described with the calves or, you know, even worse in slaughterhouses. You know, people like Timothy Patchrad and Alex Blanchett who written books on cattle slaughter in the pork industry or the pig industry. I would find it, I think, impossible to be in those circumstances because I couldn't even handle, like, one one monger in a cage without jumping in.
Elan Abrell:I think it's so important to be able to get the insight that, like, you've been able to get through your research.
Katie Gillespie:Two things I was thinking about just now when you were talking. One is that I don't know if it's actually ethical to be doing this kind of research. I think just by being there, you're complicit regardless of sort of how much, you know, I could theorize that as this practice of of witnessing. I think there is a, you know, form of complicity both in sort of, you know, just observing or, you know, in participating in the work, you know, as in Timothy Patrat's, but, you know, the the way that he participated or or Alex Blanchard participated in those industries. You know, I think all of these different ways of being in those spaces are cause for real ethical pause.
Katie Gillespie:I do feel ambivalent about maybe not the value of doing it because I think that it does, like, as you say, get like, provide, you know, empirical knowledge about these spaces that people might otherwise not get to read about, which is why I think I keep doing it. But it's not an ethically clean thing, you know, to be doing. And, also, the other thing I was thinking about when you were talking about the mongoose, you know, that mongoose was really, like, an individual and sort of easy to see as an individual because she was there alone in this cage. And I think that, you know, in some ways, I like, as I said with the mice, like, I think the numbers help to abstract from the capacity to feel really keenly the, like, impacts on each animal. I mean, even in these chicken auctions, the first few chickens, like laying hens who, were, you know, pulled out of these boxes, I was you know, they they really, like, are, like, bawking a lot and struggling and, you know, squawking is quite a rough and violent process like them.
Katie Gillespie:Even just pulling them out of boxes and holding them up. And so the first year, I was just like, you know, oh my gosh. Like, those individual hens, you know, are really going through something terrible. And then there were 300 more hens, and a third of them were, like, ISA Brown laying hen breed. And so, you know, in that like fast moving through, they all look the same.
Katie Gillespie:It's incredibly hard to like really feel each animal's experience or witness what's going on for each one individually in a way that I think it would be much harder to confront this one mongoose, you know, who you can really try to, you know, connect with and understand what they're going through. Like, that these spaces of, like, sort of industrial or high volume exploitation have that effect of just really making it hard to focus on, you know, and feel the effects of each each animal's suffering in those spaces. And so the ones who stand out are sort of exceptional, like the cow with year tag 1389 or a couple of auctions ago, there were these three heavy, you know, those, animal feed bags. They're probably, like, 60 pounds or something, and they're, like, really thick plastic. There were three of those bags that came into the auction, and every everyone else was in cardboard boxes.
Katie Gillespie:And interestingly, half about half the boxes were Amazon boxes, which I think says something so interesting about mass consumption and mass consumption of chickens. You know, the auction is the space of mass consumption. Amazon is mass consumption. But so everyone else was in these, cardboard boxes, but there were three of these big plastic bags that were tied tightly with string at the top with, like, no air holes that they brought in and put in the auction ring to wait to, because all these boxes were sort of stacked around to wait to be auctioned off. And they started moving, and I was like, oh my god.
Katie Gillespie:There are birds in those plastic bags, and they they were peacocks. And they were just each one each bag had an individual peacock just stuffed in there and then tied up, and the peacocks had their legs bound so they couldn't, you know, run away or anything if they got out. And they were so memorable. Right? I mean, I just the sort of horror of seeing these birds in plastic bags for one.
Katie Gillespie:I mean, the fact that they were peacocks, you know, sort of shocking to see a peacock cell in the midst of all these, you know, chickens and ducks and geese. And then also just back to the sort of moments of empathy that are sort of surprising moments of empathy. The women who are working the ring and and taking the animals out, they were clearly horrified that these bags contained peacocks. And they went in the back and got cardboard boxes and put the peacocks in those cardboard boxes instead. And so, I mean, it was just like sort of a moment of recognition that was off topic.
Katie Gillespie:I'm like
Elan Abrell:No. I think it's so interesting. I have an idea for a last question that we could talk about if you Yeah. Are interested. One thing that I try to think about in relation to sanctuaries, like, everywhere where I worked, where I did field work was was really focused on the care of nonhuman animals.
Elan Abrell:But I think certain spaces, even, like, specific sanctuaries, like Vine Sanctuary in Vermont, which is not also a place that I write about, you've written about, but I don't I didn't do any primary field work there. I just briefly visited. They have an approach that sees all the forms of violence and oppression and exploitation that animals are confronted with as being pretty much interlinked with forms of oppression and violence and exploitation that affect humans as as far as race and gender and sexuality and ability status. You know, every every category in which humans have treated other humans badly. And so I'm sort of curious.
Elan Abrell:So I've tried to think about how the idea of sanctuary as a form of political action has potential to spread to work in these other areas. And a lot of our colleagues in animal studies who've done, like all my favorite work outside of yours is is by people, you know, like Claire Jean Kim and Sunaura Taylor and Lori Gruen and Affin Silko and Dinesh Wadiwell's work and looking at the at the intersections of these things of human systems of violence and oppression too. I guess my question around that is, what what do you see as, like, the possibility for the work that we do to to speaking to these issues or the relevancy of it beyond there? So because, like, for me, the areas that I'm really interested in as far as the treatment of animals are if you look at like industrial animal agriculture, obviously it's got all kinds of horrible problems for the environment, from contributing to climate change to using and contaminating natural water resources, land use, water resources, land use, deforestation, but then also the, you know, the social implications of it as far as the exploited labor force, the most vulnerable people who get hurt by the system and and you and abused by the systems of animal production.
Elan Abrell:And so that's just a one huge note that I can think of of how it all comes together, but I was wondering if you had thoughts about that.
Katie Gillespie:Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of really exciting work, you know, going on in terms of trying to interrogate these sort of intersections of, like, race and species and disability and spe species, oppression. And, yeah, I mean, I think that's a really exciting, fast growing field in in animal studies and sort of adjacent fields. I don't one of the things I've been thinking about lately in that regard is thinking about, like, animal agriculture's role in in settler colonialism in The United States and in Canada and the way that that settler colonialism sort of struck it it it's, you know, structures, like, contemporary settler society and that that animal agriculture itself is really one of the, like, foundational institutions that sort of props that up. And, you know, through the, original, you know, like, bringing farmed animal species to this part of the world and then, you know, using them to violently displace and, you know, kill indigenous human communities and native animal species and destroy local ecologies and all of that.
Katie Gillespie:And so, you know, thinking about the sort of work of kind of fast forwarding to today, the settler agricultural practices are still implicated in that ongoing process of of dispossession and violence. And so, you know, what would it look like to think through movements for decolonization, and sort of decolonial action in relation to animal agriculture and and agriculture, you know, sort of settler agricultural practices more broadly, but that working against these these systems of of agriculture in the way that they exploit, you know, farmed animals could also be a mode of, sort of broader anti colonial action. Yeah. So I've just I've been thinking a lot about that. And then, you know, just in terms of linking that to sanctuaries, Darren Chang, who's, you know, just a wonderful critical animal studies scholar, who's, I think, on his way to Sydney to work with, Dinesh Wadiwell.
Katie Gillespie:His, you know, current interest is really around how sanctuaries might join in with this kind of anticolonial de colonial action and reckon with the fact that, you know, most, you know, farmed animal sanctuaries, at least in, you know, North America, are run by, you know, settler descendants and are occupying, you know, indigenous land. And so how to sort of reckon with that, especially, you know, when a sanctuary is sort of fundamentally this liberatory project is sort of simultaneously implicated in these really problematic forms of of social injustice. And so, anyway, stay tuned for his work because he's amazing. And, that's sort of one of the things I'm I'm excited about right now in that regard. But can I wanted to ask you I'm wondering, like, what kinds of questions this project and sort of thinking about sanctuaries kind of opened up?
Katie Gillespie:What did your project not answer that is sort of future you know, I think there's this, you know, wonderful growing, you know, field of of sanctuary studies now. And I think, like, as one of the or the, you know, sort of trailblazer in that field, where should we go from here?
Elan Abrell:I mean, you know, I'm I mentioned the the idea of of really kinda understanding their influence on veterinary knowledge and animal behavioral knowledge in general, I think, is an is an interesting area that more could be done in. I'm aware that some sanctuaries are are sort of working on their own with their own researchers to sort of better understand animal needs, how to maximize animals' well-being, different different species' well-being, and stuff. So there's potentially, like, useful information there that can not only help us better understand just sort of the important work of sanctuaries, but also could be extrapolated to other people who do animal care so that they can give the best lives to animals that they live with maybe outside of sanctuary settings. Certainly, what you just described as far as Darren's interest is I I I'm also equally very excited to see the research that he comes out with because that is, I think, a a really fruitful, interesting thing to explore further. And then I would say yeah.
Elan Abrell:Like, this is sort of counterintuitive. Like, one thing I tried to do as much as possible in my research, and I don't I don't know that I was always successful, was to to try to treat nonhuman animals as subjects of the research as much as the humans. And I think you do that well as also. And I think there are a lot of people who are trying to do animal ethnography in that way. I think if you are from a social science discipline like anthropology or sociology or maybe geography a little less so because you you all think about, nonhuman stuff from the get go, but it kinda sets you up to think about the humans first.
Elan Abrell:I've spoken before about the grant process and and getting funded for my research in the first place. I I got flatly rejected when I tried to frame it as a project that treated humans and other animals all as subjects in their own right and, you know, reworked the grant proposal to just be a traditional ethnography kind of project so that I could afford to actually do the research. And eventually, I was successful. But, but then I snapped back to trying to do that in my research. So that's, like, all a big prelude to say.
Elan Abrell:What I actually think would be really interesting is is some sanctuary research that's about the humans. Like, the sort of the question that initially motivated me to go and do the research, but also more into, the lives of people who choose to do that kind of work. I think not just because of their motivation to caring for animals, but a lot of other stuff that I saw as I was doing research, and I I thought about a little bit, but didn't really make it into my analysis. But but, you know, people's class experience and people's gender experience and and all the all those other issues that we were just talking about, how those influence people's lived realities as far as, like, bringing them to the this work. And it it is difficult work, and sanctuaries don't have a lot of money.
Elan Abrell:And you have to be willing to, you know, make certain certain sacrifices to do that work full time or at least give up on the possibility of a certain kind of life at this point. I think that a lot of people who go into sanctuary work choose that on purpose, you know, or they get into it quickly and they realize that there there are there are costs or trade offs for doing that kind of work and they wanna do it anyway. It would be really interesting to understand, like, the sort of their experiences, the stories of people who come to sanctuaries and why. I should also add, though, that I I think it should be done with the cooperation of sanctuaries, if that makes sense. I I think there's a lot of things you could study as a social scientist where you don't need to get the the permission of the social world that you're going into in order to do the research.
Elan Abrell:But I do think that there are, like, specifically ethical concerns around certain spaces and sanctuaries are one of them where it would be it it is good to study people who wanna be studied, not try to study people who don't wanna be studied. I don't I don't know if I'm if if I if I was totally successful at that or not. I have to learn from any mistakes that I made, and I hesitate to encourage people to do future research in a way that would be in a position on people who are doing really important work for vulnerable beings who depend on them full time. So I guess I would just say, like, be cautious moving forward. Make sure that you that whatever kind of research you're doing isn't research that's going to be disruptive to the the kind of work that sanctuaries are doing.
Katie Gillespie:Yeah. Totally. And, also, like, this sort of question is of, like, who the research is for. I mean, I think that in animal studies, we think about that a lot in terms of who like, who is research benefiting and how, you know, in more critical animal studies, how how can this sort of change things or, improve conditions for the animals themselves, the subjects of our research. And, you know, I think the same thing could be, you know, practiced in terms of of sanctuaries too.
Katie Gillespie:Like, you know, I've thought about, like, approaching sanctuaries with the question of, like, what what research would be useful for you? Like, what kind of not just sort of in this academic realm, but, like, I've been talking to Judy Woods at Pigs Peace about you know, she's coming up on thirty years of experience in pig care, and she's doing pig care every day. So she doesn't have time to sort of communicate that into something that's widely that's, like, readable, you know, like text or something like that. She sometimes has people come and learn from her at the sanctuary. She goes to other sanctuaries to help with sort of problems or setup or something.
Katie Gillespie:But, you know, one of the things I've thought about is it would be great to actually just try to document her knowledge and assemble it into, you know, something that that she could publish that would help other sanctuaries. You know? So that so, yeah, for me, one of the questions would be, how could we kind of also do research in service of sanctuaries themselves while you know, in addition to sort of being about sanctuaries, but for for sanctuaries too, I guess.
Elan Abrell:Yeah. I love that. That's great. I mean, there's just, like, living library of knowledge among a lot of different caregivers at sanctuaries who become experts in what they're doing over the years. I mean, I think this already happens all the time.
Elan Abrell:I know that sanctuaries collaborate with each other and support each other and have the social media groups where they share do knowledge sharing. It's a really, I think, like, generative network in that way of of helping each other do their work. But I think you're right that it would be it would be great to ask what kind of research like that we could be done to to for sanctuaries and not just about sanctuaries. Well, that's a maybe a great note to end on.
Katie Gillespie:This has been so fun to be with you, Alon.
Elan Abrell:Yeah. Likewise.
Katie Gillespie:Yeah. Thank you.
Elan Abrell:Thank you so much for joining me. It's been it's been super awesome.