Are we using language that makes animal exploitation sound normal?
From 'livestock' to 'raising animals': why metaphors shape what feels normal, what feels possible, and what stays unthinkable.
What do the terms ‘livestock’, ‘game animals’ and ‘raising animals’ all have in common?
They’re all metaphors. As animal advocates, we know that animals are not ‘stock‘, hunting them is not a ‘game‘, and that farming animals is not lovingly ‘raising‘ them by ‘caregivers‘. Animal exploitation industries have been hugely strategic in their language choice and framing, quietly shaping how millions of people think about these issues, so that they become normalised and naturalised.
Why metaphors are more than just wording
More than just describing reality, the language we use shapes how people perceive it – what feels natural, what seems possible, and what remains unthinkable. This means that we need to make strategic choices about the metaphors we choose in our advocacy work. But are metaphors really that powerful? And, if so, why?
Metaphor is one of the brain’s most powerful ‘hacks’.
Our brains are economical by design: they try to do as much as possible with as little effort (and energy) as possible. Which is useful for getting through the day, but it makes genuinely complex or abstract ideas harder to think about, because they demand more mental energy. So our brains find hacks and work-arounds.
Difficult concepts are usually understood by building on stores of knowledge (or mental models) already in place in our brains. Metaphor may be one of the most efficient tools for doing this.
Once you start looking, you’ll see metaphors everywhere
Cognitive linguist George Lakoff claims that metaphor is so fundamental to how the brain functions that it is part of the cognitive machinery that makes abstract reasoning possible.
Once you start looking for metaphors, it’s easy to spot them everywhere.
Wonder why we’ve bolded so many random words in this article? They’re all metaphors. (And we’ve likely missed a few!) We wanted to highlight how it’s almost impossible to construct a sentence without using metaphor. This is how hardwired they’ve become in our thinking, and how invisible (and therefore powerful) they often are.
To highlight their prevalence further, here are some common metaphors that are widely used:
We talk about money like water: assets can be liquid or frozen, cash is said to flow, wealth can trickle down, and money is stored in a bank or held in reserve.
We talk about time as if it were a scarce resource: we waste it, save it, spend it, and sometimes have little to spare.
We also lean on simple spatial metaphors to organise value and status: profits are up, influence falls, or we climb the social ladder.
More than simply a turn of phrase, metaphors change how we understand things, in ways that can both help and hinder social justice issues. This is why metaphor is so often used to shape public opinion, including about other animals.
As well as metaphors like ‘livestock’, hunting ‘game’, and ‘raising’ animals,
animals are often used as shorthand for human traits. Someone might be sly as a fox, or wise as an owl. However, calling someone a rat, a pig, or a snake insults the person as well as the animal. Because they draw on cultural narratives that portray those animals as dirty, greedy or treacherous, this kind of casual usage can, over time, cement a ‘common sense’ that certain animals are contemptible or inferior, and therefore less deserving of concern.
The subtle influence of metaphors becomes especially clear when we hear people use them automatically. In focus groups Animal Think Tank has conducted, participants reveal how deeply embedded these metaphors are in their everyday reasoning. The metaphor of ‘work’, for instance, turns animal exploitation into ‘employment’, suggesting mutual benefit and voluntary consent.
As one participant told us:
“[F]armed animals are, in essence, working animals. They’re doing a job. They perform a job that they enjoy.”
Another described “thanking them for their service” every time she walked past a local field of cows.
Comments like these reveal how the ‘work’ metaphor can colonise people’s thinking, and how it also connects with the deeper cultural narrative in which farmed animals are framed as willing participants in their own exploitation, their suffering reframed as ‘service‘.
Same facts. Different metaphor. Very different solutions
Metaphor has been the focus of many research studies. In a well-known set of experiments, researchers gave two groups of participants a short report about crime in a fictional city. The facts and statistics were identical in both reports, but the opening metaphor changed.
Either “crime is a beast preying on the city” or “crime is a virus infecting the city”. When crime was framed as a beast, people were more likely to favour enforcement and punishment responses, such as policing and harsher sentencing.
However, when framed as a virus, participants were more likely to favour prevention and social reform responses aimed at underlying causes.
Metaphors can help people grasp complex systems
The FrameWorks Institute also found that people exposed to the metaphor of a ‘runaway food system‘ helped to build support for systemic, policy-level actions to improve the food system. This shows that using metaphor strategically can build concern and shift how people understand complex issues.
Our movement is already using powerful and effective metaphors in our animal advocacy, often without realising it. Factory farming is a common metaphor, encouraging people to understand animal agriculture through their existing mental model about factories, seeing it as something mechanised, dirty, and designed to maximise output and profit. The phrase was popularised by Ruth Harrison’s 1964 book Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry, which helped cement the idea that these systems turn living beings into production units.
Two metaphors we’re considering testing next
What other metaphors could our movement be using to help people understand the complex system of animal exploitation? This is a question Animal Think Tank hopes to begin answering soon with further message-testing research. Here are two ideas we have been thinking about and are still to test, but would love your feedback on:
Our movement often refers to ‘animal agriculture’ or ‘the animal farming industry’, but what if we used the metaphor of ‘Big Animal Ag’?
This metaphor, of the industry being ‘big’, firstly draws on the familiar shorthand used to refer to industries like Big Tobacco and Big Oil. Secondly, it implies undesirable aspects of the industry, like concentrated corporate power, lobbying, and unfair economic domination. Used carefully, there is potential that it could help people see animal exploitation less as a matter of individual consumer choice, and more as a system shaped by a powerful industry that manipulates markets, buys political influence, and has spent decades normalising harm on a massive scale.
Another potential metaphor we’re considering testing is ‘animal agriculture empire‘. A potential advantage is that many people already have a well-developed mental model for what an empire is, so the phrase does not require them to learn a new concept. The term empire often implies something built unfairly through conquest, benefiting only a small few at the expense of many. ‘Empire’ also contains a built-in sense of instability. Empires rise and fall. Perhaps the wide use of this metaphor can help people see that the ‘animal agriculture empire‘ is something that will not last forever, and that its fall is a historical inevitability. Of course, some people may think of an empire as a good thing, a sign of power, or may admire those who build empires, such as the Romans. Whether these metaphors, amongst others we’re thinking about, are helpful or harmful is an empirical question we hope to answer soon.
What metaphors are you already using in your advocacy, and what do they make visible and bring into focus for your audiences? We’d love to hear what you’ve found works well in your conversations, campaigns and creative work, and which metaphors you think we should be testing next. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
‘Big Ag’ feels cognitively automatic in terms of conveying a negative foundation and mechanism, however, perhaps more cognitive work is required to translate ‘empire’ into something negative, as there may be positive associations
with ‘empire’ for any given capitalist.
I like "Big Ag" the most. "Big Animal Ag" is sort of a mouthful. "Big Meat" probably hits too close to home ("But I like eating meat?"). "Empire" connotes a tyrannical regime, which people may perceive as an exaggeration.
In addition to metaphors that capture the industry's evil, I also think we need to reflect hard on metaphors that capture the animals' worthiness. I know y'all have already done some work on this, but my intuition is that "relational" metaphors are strongest here. Terms like "fellow creatures" and "co-inhabitants" capture our shared experience. Likewise, terms like "stewards" and "caretakers" connote our aspirational relationship status, as contrasted with our current status as "abusers." We need to "mend," "heal," and "restore" this "broken relationship." We aren't meant to abuse animals; we are meant to care for them.