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Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork from an industrial pig slaughterhouse to reflect on how the human/nonhuman binary is both reinforced and blurred during public tours.

Paper long abstract:

The transformation of animals to food relies on a number of critical oppositions, not least the distinction between humans and nonhumans. This dualism underpins industrialized forms of death that facilitates the killing of 20,000 pigs a day in a Danish slaughterhouse. This slaughterhouse offers twice-daily public tours led by tour guides.

Rather than focusing on the life of the human and nonhuman, reflecting on the industrialized deaths of nonhumans can shed light on conceptions of the human as well as the humane. Following fifteen months multispecies ethnographic research, six of which were spent in an industrial pig slaughterhouse, I illustrate how inevitable killing and industrial forms of death are critical ways used to distinguish the human from the nonhuman. Industrialized forms of death rely on the crucial othering of the nonhuman by emphasizing the teleological life of the pig who is bred for meat. Therefore, nonhuman death as an industrialized form distinguishes nonhumans from humans.

Nevertheless, whilst nonhuman death can be industrial in nature, it cannot be perceived as violent. Thus, drawing on ethnographic moments from these public tours, I convey how killing pigs industrially is framed by animal welfare discourse and guides emphasize human/nonhuman similarity by taking sentience seriously.

This paper will show how public tours exhibiting industrialized forms of deaths blur the human/nonhuman boundary upon which they operate. This reveals a structure of alterity that both reinforces and dispels difference between humans and pigs.