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Below, you will find explanations of each image in the exhibit.
Enslavement
Kidnapped from their homes and sold into slavery, 1.6 million Africans were transported on slave ships as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Britain quickly became the leading slave trader, and by the late 17th century, one out of every four ships that left Liverpool harbour was a slave-trading ship. Africans captured and forced into slavery were often compared to animals in order to justify beating, shackling and abusing them. Called "brutes" and "beasts" because of the colour of their skin, their lives were considered expendable. This oppressive mentality continues in Europe. Bears and other animals are separated from their families, held against their will and forced to "entertain". Considering that humans often take advantage of their power over animals for the sake of pleasure and profit, it's no wonder that civil rights and animal rights activist Dick Gregory calls circuses that use animals "modern-day slavery". Animals used for entertainment are beaten, kept in cramped cages where they go insane and fed poor diets. They are forced to perform confusing tricks through intimidation, abuse and fear of pain. Bears are taught to "dance" by being forced to stand on sheets of hot metal. Every time they lift their paws to escape the excruciating pain, the trainer plays a tune. The cruel process is repeated until bears learn to associate pain with music and automatically raise their paws out of fear when the music starts. Trainers control bears by using heavy chains attached to rings that have been pushed through their highly sensitive noses and lips. Already in constant pain and discomfort from this, bears also have their claws cut without any anaesthetics – the equivalent of cutting off humans' finger tips. Although they live up to 30 years in the wild, "dancing" bears rarely live more than eight years in captivity. Beheading
Developed in France, the guillotine became the country's only legal form of execution in 1792 (with the exception of certain crimes against the security of the state, which entailed execution by firing squad). In just one year, during the infamous French "Reign of Terror", as many as 40,000 people were killed by the guillotine. By the time the death penalty was abolished in France in 1981, tens of thousands of people had been beheaded. Considered to be a spectator sport, death by guillotine drew large crowds that viewed an execution as family entertainment. In 2003 alone, 900 million animals were killed for food in the UK. Based on this number, approximately 2.4 million animals are slaughtered every day; 100,000 are slaughtered every hour and 1,600 are slaughtered every minute. Animals don't march willingly to their deaths. Terrified cows are often dragged off lorries and shocked with painful electric prods in order to get them moving. Forced through a chute, they are shot in the head with a bolt gun which is meant to stun them. This technique often fails, and every year in the UK, as many as 230,000 cows are improperly stunned. Countless animals are still conscious when their throats are slit and their limbs are hacked off. One abattoir worker admitted to frequently cutting the legs off conscious cows, telling the Washington Post, "They blink. They make noises. ... The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around". According to another worker, "[T]hey die piece by piece". Experimentation
The "Ice Pick" lobotomy, which involved hammering an ice pick through a patient's eye socket and into the brain, was invented by psychiatrist Walter Freeman. Used extensively to control the behaviour of those who were defenceless, tens of thousands of gruesome and irreversible lobotomies were unnecessarily performed on prisoners, political opponents, rebels, children who were performing poorly in school and "difficult" or unwanted relatives. As it became clear that lobotomies were extremely ineffective and severely damaging to patients – as well as unethical and widely abused – neurosurgeons around the world abandoned them in favour of more humane methods of treatment. Much like the victims of lobotomies, animals are powerless to defend themselves against torture and terror in cruel and unnecessary experiments. Each year, millions of mice, cats, dogs, chimpanzees and other animals are poisoned, blinded, burned, cloned, bred for their organs, addicted to drugs and alcohol, forced to suffer strokes, subjected to maternal deprivation, given diabetes and various types of cancer, and infected with horrifying viruses such as the Ebola virus. Their suffering is even more tragic because of the fact that great physiological differences between humans and animals make these experiments inaccurate, unreliable and pointless. Ninety-two per cent of new drugs fail clinical trials – after they have passed safety tests on animals – and more than 10,000 people are killed in the UK each year by the side effects of prescription drugs (the fourth biggest killer in the Western world). Modern non-animal research and teaching methods are more accurate, less expensive, less time-consuming and more humane than animal experiments are. Forced Labour
In order to satisfy the demand for cheap labour during Britain's Industrial Revolution, orphaned and impoverished children as young as 4 and 5 were put to work in dark, crowded factories. Working long hours in terrible conditions, children were often pushed to the breaking point, with little time to rest or eat and no consideration for their needs to socialise, exercise, enjoy freedom or even breathe fresh air. Many children – tired and worn out form being worked too hard – were scalped, crippled or killed in machinery accidents, and most suffered injuries or health problems from spending day after day in such harsh environments. In the profit-driven world of factory farming, the welfare of chickens is also a low priority. The battery-cage system was developed to produce a cheap consumer product. Egg-laying hens spend their entire lives inside filthy wire cages – which are stacked on top of each other – with approximately seven other birds. A European ban on battery cages is scheduled to take effect in 2012, but this date is threatened by industry lobbying efforts. So-called "enriched" cages – which provide only 50 square centimetres more useable floor space per hen – also fail to meet hens' behavioural needs. Stress and extremely crowded conditions cause hens to peck at one another, so farmers cut off a portion of their beaks with a hot blade. The hens' bones become brittle because of the overproduction of eggs and the lack of exercise, and they break easily. After about two years, their egg production declines and their spent bodies are sent to slaughter, where they are used in dog and cat food, chicken soup and school lunches. Chickens are often still conscious when their legs are painfully forced into shackles, their throats are slit or they are dumped into tanks of scalding-hot water for feather removal. Massacre
The Spanish Civil War started in 1936 following a military uprising against the left-wing government. With the support of fascists throughout Europe, right-wing General Francisco Franco emerged triumphant in 1939, which led to dictatorship in Spain. An estimated 500,000 people – including children, who were often the victims of aerial bombings – were killed, causing casualties on both sides. Massacres have occurred throughout human history, often exterminating entire groups of innocent people because of warfare and prejudice. Animals are also the innocent and defenceless casualties of a war waged against them by humans. They are treated as dispensable objects that exist merely to be exploited and – more often than not – left to suffer and die in agony. There are no ceasefires in this war. Commercial fishing, which kills billions of sea animals each year, has decimated the ocean, bringing many species of fish populations to the brink of extinction. Because of the industry's indiscriminate practices, the population of the world's large predatory fish – such as swordfish and marlins – has declined 90 per cent, and several species of sturgeons are now endangered. Scientists have proved that fish are intelligent individuals who feel pain and fear, yet they are subjected to unspeakable cruelty when they are caught in nets. Commercial fishers use vast factory-style trawlers – which are the size of football fields – to gather tons of sea animals. Animals trapped in nets are dragged along the ocean floor along with rocks and coral, which grind the scales off fish. Some animals are squeezed so tightly against the sides of the nets that their eyes burst. Other fishing boats use gill nets, which cause fish to suffocate or bleed to death when they try to escape. When fish are hauled out of the water, the intense internal pressure from decompression may rupture their swim bladders, pop out their eyes and push their oesophagi and stomachs out through their mouths. Using pickaxes to sort through the catch, fishers throw the dead and dying unwanted animals – called "bycatch" – back into the ocean and toss the animals they want to keep on top of ice, where they slowly freeze to death. On some boats, the butchering begins immediately, as the terrified fish are cut apart while they are still conscious. Restraint for Torture
The electric chair – invented by Harold P Brown – became the primary form of execution in the US in 1889. Using this method, a person is forcibly strapped down and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body. Although the electric chair was once touted as humane, numerous incidents – in which people burned, caught on fire, had their eyes explode or had to be subjected to multiple shocks – have changed the public's opinion about the electric chair over the years. Although it's still used in a handful of US states, many people have come to view the electric chair as cruel and unusual punishment, prompting legislators to replace it with more humane methods of execution. Vivisectors often confine animals such as primates to chairs or other restraint devices in order to infect them with diseases, force-feed them toxic chemicals, implant electrodes in their brains, or perform other invasive procedures. Animals confined in this way suffer both physically and psychologically. A survey conducted for The New Scientist indicates that the majority of Britons disapprove of using primates to test cosmetics, drugs and vaccines, particularly when the tests involve pain, illness or death – as they almost always do. Despite this, experimentation on primates persists in the UK and will continue as long as animals – who cannot defend themselves against abuse – are allowed to be legally imprisoned and exploited. Force-Feeding
In the fight to give women the right to vote, many suffragists in jail resorted to hunger strikes to protest those in power. Not wanting these hunger strikes to succeed and unwilling to release all the imprisoned suffragists who had adopted this strategy, prison authorities engaged in a cruel campaign of force-feeding their inmates. Prison warders would hold the victims down while doctors forced them to swallow rubber tubing, through which liquid food was poured. If the victim refused to open her mouth, the tube was forced through her nose. This extremely painful process – which caused bleeding and nausea – would be repeated up to three times daily. In a calculated attempt to deal with these hunger strikes and prevent the suffragists from becoming martyrs, the government passed the "Cat and Mouse Act" in 1913. Likening the cruel way the government was "playing" with these woman and their health to the way cats play with mice, the Cat and Mouse Act allowed suffragists to go on hunger strikes and be released as soon as they became ill – only to be re-arrested and thrown back in prison after they regained their health. Although the act was meant to demoralise activists, it was instead viewed as a violation of human rights, making many male voters more sympathetic to hunger strikers. In this picture, a duck is being force-fed to produce foie gras – pâté created from the grotesquely enlarged and diseased livers of ducks and geese. The process is quick and violent: The typical worker is expected to force-feed 500 birds three times a day, allowing only seconds for each feeding. Confined to cages so small that they can't turn around or stretch their wings, birds have long metal pipes repeatedly forced down their throats, and up to 4 pounds of grain and fat are pumped into their stomachs several times every day. The pipes often rip holes in the birds' throats which are so large that water spills out when they drink. Birds often die when their stomachs burst, and workers try to fatten their livers to up to 10 times their normal size. Not surprisingly, the mortality rate of ducks on foie gras farms is 20 times greater than that of birds on other poultry farms. Liberation
Movements for social change almost always meet with opposition. When women sought the right to vote, their efforts were often impeded: They were ridiculed when they held protests and were scoffed at when they achieved suffrage. The Animal Liberation exhibit features a photograph from the New York City Women's Equality March, which took place on August 26, 1970. The march celebrated the 50th anniversary of the passage of the US' 19th Amendment, which granted American women full suffrage. Men toting insulting placards lined the streets to protest the celebration of this important date. During the many years it took to shut down a pigeon-shooting event in the US, activists from PETA US and other organisations encountered similar opposition. In this cruel event, pigeons were held in cages until they were released in front of a line of hunters who shot them. After the dead and dying pigeons fell to the ground, children were instructed to pick up the injured pigeons and rip off their heads. Animal rights groups were not well received at the event – they were mocked, ridiculed, and physically and verbally abused. Locals held counterprotests which often became violent; the other photo on this panel was taken at one such counterprotest. Compassion won out, however, and the pigeon shoot was cancelled in 1999 following years of legislative battles.
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