Farming Humans Documentary: An Exploitation Experiment

I recently heard about a new documentary, Farming Humans. The producers are looking for twelve volunteers – three vegans, three vegetarians, and three omnivores – to live like factory farmed animals in cages for ten days.

From the project’s Go Fund Me page (which we won’t link to here):

As the volunteers arrive at the facility, they will be broken down into three groups: pigs, cows and chickens, and tattooed and branded with serial numbers that will become their identities. Each volunteer will be equipped with a camera so that they can document his/her experiences. During the ten days that the experiment takes place, the human volunteers will undergo the same horrific treatment that factory farmed animals experience except, at the end of their stay, the humans are set free while the farm animals are sentenced for life.

What we do to animals is horrible. It’s absolutely cruel. But my first reaction to the Farming Humans documentary was disgust. Who would volunteer for such a thing? Who would watch? What kind of a sick, twisted idea is this?

My reaction was automatic; it was visceral. As someone who believes the undercover footage that ag gag bills try to stop around the country is vital, why did I react as such when faced with a human representation of the same treatment? The best way I can explain it is that, while I understand the intent to show viewers that our everyday treatment of “food animals” is terrible, the fact that humans would volunteer to go through it and to be filmed seems exploitative. Vegans are already on the side of empathy – why would they need to experience this? Omnivores aren’t actually going to go in thinking “it’s not that bad,” are they?

I feel that there is a place for the footage of animal abuse in our fight for an end to animal abuse. I believe that those who wish to hide the truth are doing a great disservice to our movement – and of course they are; they are the industry we speak out against. I don’t believe that trying to recreate that abuse with non-human animals will have the same effect, or that it properly reflects what is wrong in our world. Sure, walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is supposed to make you understand them better. But at the very base of it all, when it comes to the pain we cause others, we don’t need to experience it ourselves to know it’s wrong.

Perhaps it’s obvious that I’m struggling with this project and with my feelings about it. What are your thoughts on the Farming Humans documentary?

Photo credit: ChaosHusky via Flickr