Part of a series on
Animal rights
Overview Animal cruelty Animal welfare Around the world History Primate rights in research Timeline Veganism Vegetarianism
Movement Advocates Vegans Vegetarians Groups
Animal abuse Animal–industrial complex Animal testing Bloodsports Bullfighting Cosmetic Hunting Fishing Captivity Circuses Oceanariums Zoos Chick culling Companion animals Abandonment Puppy mills Consumption Cats Cattle Dogs Horses Live seafood Fur farming Goldfish swallowing Killing Mutilation Wild animals
Ideas Abolitionism Animal ethics Animal protectionism Bambi effect Carnism Personism Sentientism Speciesism
Related topics Cultured meat Deep ecology Environmentalism Radical Humanism Welfarism
Animals portal
v t e

Animal exploitation refers to the human utilization of non-human animals, typically for the former's personal and economic benefit or resource extraction from the latter, including meat, hide, bodily secretions, organs, labor, and so forth, which often results in suffering and harm on the animal's part and/or confinement and deprivation of the animal's natural living conditions. It occurs across various animal industries and involves different practices, treating non-human animals as commodities rather than sentient beings and violating their rights. According to the Humane League, animal exploitation lies at the opposite end of the spectrum from animal rights, "which are situations in which animals have no choice to live freely, no autonomy over their own lives. Instead, humans dictate every aspect of an exploited animal's life."^[1] Animal exploitation occurs across industries ranging from agriculture, where animals are treated as commodities to be turned into food, to science, where they are treated as unwilling test subjects. Animal rights are also violated when their habitats are destroyed often to make room for more farm lands and human habitat expansion.^[1]

Animal exploitation has several negative consequences, including those for humans, which is exemplified by factory farming.^[2]: 9 According to the Humane Society of the United States, animal exploitation also has negative societal moral consequences.^[2]: 17 Scholars identify the denial of the moral status of non-human animals as a model for human slavery, genocide, and exploitation of women.^[2]: 17

• Speciesism
• Animal industrial complex

• Stache, Christian (2020). "Conceptualising animal exploitation in capitalism: Getting terminology straight". Capital & Class. 44 (3). SAGE: 401–421. doi:10.1177/0309816819884697.
• Francione, Gary L. (2008). Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation. Columbia University Press. JSTOR 10.7312/fran13950.

• Animal exploitation: Introduction