Insights Into Our Complicated Relationships with Animals

I've long been a huge fan of Dr. Melanie Joy's work across many areas, including the psychology of oppression and how we view other animals and decide what we eat and who we eat. My interest was rekindled when I read her essay, "Is Eating Animals a Psychological Blind Spot?" I wanted to learn more about why she wrote it, her recent work on how people choose their meal plans—being plant-based isn't "radical"—and our complex, confused relationships with nonhuman animals. Here, she connects the dots and fills in the blanks on her paradigm-changing work.

Marc Bekoff: How and why did you become interested in the psychology of eating animals?

Melanie Joy: Like many people, I grew up with a dog who I loved, and I also grew up eating meat, eggs, and dairy. Over many years and many meals, I never thought about how I pet my dog with one hand while I had a pork chop with the other—a pork chop that had once been an animal at least as intelligent and sentient as my dog.

But in 1989, when I was 23 years old, I ate a contaminated hamburger that landed me in the hospital. After that experience, I couldn’t eat meat again because I was disgusted by it. While learning about my new, vegetarian diet, I came across information about animal agriculture—and was shocked by the extent of harm it caused to animals (as well as to the environment and public health). But what shocked me even more was that nobody I tried to share this information with wanted to hear it. They’d say things like “Don’t tell me that; you’ll ruin my meal,” or they’d call me a radical vegan hippie propagandist.

I became curious as to how rational, caring people—like I’d been when I was still eating meat—could just shut down when it came to eating animals.

MB: How did your curiosity turn into research?

MJ: I enrolled in a doctoral psychology program, and wrote my dissertation on the psychology of eating animals. For my research, I interviewed meat eaters, butchers, people who raised and killed animals for food, vegetarians, and vegans. I discovered an invisible belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals. I call this system carnism.

Carnism is the reason we virtually never ask why we eat certain animals but not others, or why we eat any animals at all. This is because carnism is institutionalized. When, for example, we study nutrition, we actually study carnistic nutrition.

Carnism is also a violent system, causing extensive animal suffering; the system runs counter to core human values such as compassion. Most people wouldn’t willingly violate these values and support unnecessary violence toward other living beings. Therefore, carnism relies on psychological defense mechanisms that distort our thoughts and block our natural empathy; we act against our values without fully realizing what we’re doing.

I wrote a book about carnism, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, which is now in 23 languages. The extent of interest in the subject suggests that people are curious about the paradoxical relationships we have with animals.

MB: What are some of your findings based on your research and why should readers be interested?

MJ: The invisible “carnistic mentality” that enables us to harm farmed animals is similar to the mentality that enables us to harm companion animals and even humans. Mental health professionals are rightly concerned about ways of thinking that blunt empathy and enable violence. This concern has yet to be extended to all sentient beings, though, because we’ve been conditioned to believe that certain types of individuals—in this case, farmed animals—are not worthy of moral consideration.

Our failure to recognize and respect the sentience of all beings enables suffering on a massive scale: more farmed animals are slaughtered globally in one day than the total number of people killed in all wars throughout history. It also reinforces the very kind of thinking that needs to change if we hope to create a kinder world for everybody.

MB: Who do you hope to reach with your work?

MJ: Because carnism is almost universally practiced, anyone with the privilege of making their food choices freely can benefit from learning about it. When we understand what carnistic defenses are and how they operate, we’re less affected by them and better able to make food choices that reflect our authentic thoughts and feelings.

It’s especially important to reach psychologists with this work, because it’s psychology—the carnistic mentality—that drives the entire system. (See Is Eating Animals a Psychological Blind Spot?)

Fortunately, a rapidly growing field of psychology is dedicated to understanding and addressing the psychology of eating animals, and a substantial body of research has emerged since the publication of the first edition of my book in 2010.

MB: Are you hopeful that people will pay attention to their meals? Not only for the sake of saving animals, but also for their health?

MJ: Yes. A lot has changed in the past decade, as people have become increasingly aware of the harms of factory farming and concerned about their impact on animals, the environment, and their own health. And more and more professionals, including dietitians, medical doctors, and psychologists, are conducting research that points to the value of plant-forward food choices for the wellbeing of animals, humans, and the planet.

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