On this day in vegan history · June 13, 2000
The Woman Who Exposed the Factory Farm
A quietly written book about cages and crates made a government uncomfortable enough to act, and the rules it produced are still the baseline for what a farmed animal is owed.
The facts
- Born
- 24 June 1920, London
- Died
- 13 June 2000, London, aged 79
- Animal Machines
- Published 1964; prompted the UK's Brambell Committee
- Legacy
- The 1965 Brambell Report's Five Freedoms
Ruth Harrison died in London on 13 June 2000, eleven days short of her eightieth birthday. In 1964 she had published Animal Machines, a plain, documented account of the cages and crates replacing Britain's farmyards, and it did what most exposes never manage: it moved a government. Within a year the UK appointed a committee under Francis Brambell to investigate farm animal welfare, and its 1965 report produced the Five Freedoms, the standard still cited whenever anyone asks what a farmed animal is owed. Harrison went on to sit on the Farm Animal Welfare Advisory Committee herself, staying involved in the policy her book had forced into existence for decades. Peter Singer later said reading her book helped push him toward vegetarianism and the arguments in Animal Liberation.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
In fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people.
Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines (1964)
Source: Goodreads -
Cruelty is acknowledged only where profitability ceases.
Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines (1964)
Source: Goodreads
Why it still matters
The Five Freedoms are still the reference point regulators and welfare scientists use today, and they exist because one woman's book made a government uncomfortable enough to act.
Sources
This history is still being written.
Every morning the brief covers what moved veganism forward, and every day one more verified piece of that story joins this almanac. Free, and tomorrow’s lands in your inbox.
Free, every morning. No guilt. No preaching.