Animal rights intersectionality is the idea that animal protection and human rights movements were never actually separate fights. When people first hear the name Voters For Animal Rights, they sometimes assume our work lives in a separate lane from human rights movements. They picture animal protection as its own issue, disconnected from racial justice, labor rights, or immigrant rights. The truth is the opposite. The most effective animal protection campaigns recognize this intersectionality instead of ignoring it.

At Voters For Animal Rights, we organize voters, lobby legislators, and pass laws. Every one of our campaigns sits at the crossroads of animal exploitation and human harm. Below, we break down how that intersectionality shows up in the issues we work on every day. We also explain why political power-building, not just awareness, actually changes outcomes for animals and people alike.

Animal Cruelty Doesn’t Happen in Isolation From Human Exploitation

Industries built on animal exploitation almost always exploit people too. Factory farms rely on low-wage, often undocumented immigrant labor working in dangerous conditions. The wild pet trade and wildlife trafficking networks frequently overlap with organized crime that also traffics humans. Carriage horse operations put underpaid workers on the same unsafe city streets as the horses they handle, without paying for health insurance for the workers. When we advocate for animals, we very often advocate against the same systems of exploitation, deregulation, and corporate power that harm vulnerable workers and communities. This is animal rights intersectionality in practice.

This is why Voters For Animal Rights’ approach centers political power-building. Real change for animals requires the same tools that drive human rights progress: organized voters, sustained lobbying, and legislators held accountable at the ballot box.

Our Campaigns: Animal Rights Intersectionality in Action

Carriage Horses and Worker Safety: Romanch’s Law (Intro 943)

Carriage horse Deniz and tourist Romanch Mahajan both died this June, the second in a runaway carriage crash. New York City Council Member Chris Marte renamed Ryder’s Law to Romanch’s Law (Intro 943), and it heads to a City Council hearing on July 15. This campaign is a direct example of animal rights intersectionality with public safety and labor exploitation of workers. A law protecting horses from exploitation on NYC streets is, at the same time, a public safety law protecting tourists, pedestrians, and carriage drivers themselves. Horse-drawn carriage operations put exhausted animals and underpaid workers on the same traffic-choked streets, where a single spooked horse can seriously injure people and kill horses. The carriage drivers are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, so that carriage owners do not have to provide them with benefits like health insurance that they deserve. Ending the carriage trade protects horses and humans in one legislative stroke.

Octopus Farming and Food System Justice

New York’s landmark octopus farming ban now awaits Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature. It isn’t only about preventing suffering in a famously intelligent species. Researchers have documented links between industrial aquaculture expansion and coastal community harm, including water pollution and strain on the fishing communities that depend on healthy oceans. Banning octopus farming before it starts in New York delivers an animal protection win and takes a precautionary stand against an industry with a poor human rights record elsewhere in the world.

The Save Our Bacon Act and the Farm Bill

Factory farming sits at one of the clearest intersections of animal cruelty and human rights. Farm Bill negotiations in Washington, D.C. currently hold up the Save Our Bacon Act, a bill that would protect state-level animal welfare standards like California’s Proposition 12 from industrial pork lobbyists trying to gut them. Gestation crates confine pigs so tightly they cannot turn around. Those same concentrated animal feeding operations (factory farms) also cause respiratory illness in nearby communities, contaminate groundwater in low-income rural areas, and create dangerous working conditions for slaughterhouse employees, many of whom are immigrants with limited or nonexistent labor protections. Defending state animal welfare laws also defends the communities living next door to factory farms — another clear case of animal rights intersectionality.

NYC Foie Gras Ban Enforcement

Foie gras production force-feeds ducks and geese until their livers swell to many times their normal size. New York City banned its sale years ago, but enforcing that ban has meant an ongoing fight against industry pressure. This campaign reflects a broader human rights theme: corporate lobbying power frequently works to override laws that voters and elected officials already passed. Defending foie gras ban enforcement also defends the democratic process itself. Additionally, Hudson Valley Foie Gras and LaBelle Farms have been sued and cited multiple times for mistreatment of farm workers.

Intro 912: Ending the Wild Bird Sales Trade

Intro 912 would ban the retail sale of birds in NYC. Birds sold in New York City are often bred in bird mills — the avian equivalent of puppy mills, where birds are mass-bred in crowded, unsanitary conditions purely for profit. Like puppy mills, bird mills cut corners on basic care and oversight, and weak regulation lets these operations keep running with little accountability to consumers or the animals themselves. Reintroducing this legislation and mobilizing supporters to pass this crucial legislation connects animal protection advocacy directly to the broader fight for consumer protection and stronger oversight of unregulated breeding industries — another clear example of animal rights intersectionality.

Glue Traps, Cyanide Bombs, and Environmental Justice

Our advocacy against glue traps and predator-killing cyanide bombs (M-44 devices) overlaps significantly with environmental and public health justice. These devices don’t discriminate. They injure companion animals, harm children and bystanders, and contaminate ecosystems that low-income and rural communities depend on. Our HUD/ESA campaign, which protects the rights of tenants with disabilities to keep emotional support and service animals in housing, pairs naturally with this work. And, landlords often use glue traps rather that fix the root problems with the conditions in their buildings where tenants live. Together they show how animal protection law frequently doubles as housing rights law and disability rights law.

Spay/Neuter Access and Pet Food Pantries

Our work supporting low-cost spay/neuter programs and pet food pantries is explicitly about economic justice. Many low-income families lack access to affordable veterinary care and pet food, and that gap drives animal surrenders to shelters just as much as any welfare failure does. Supporting these programs keeps families — human and animal — together.

Elephants, Zoos, and Captivity

Happy the elephant died at the Bronx Zoo, and our advocacy around her death, along with our broader work opposing elephant captivity, connects to a long human rights history. That history includes resisting the commodification of sentient beings for entertainment and profit, including incidents like the Texas GOP elephant controversy. The same thread runs through both the animal rights movement and historical human rights struggles against exploitation for spectacle.

Why Animal Rights Intersectionality Wins Campaigns

Voters For Animal Rights is a volunteer-led 501(c)(4) built specifically to convert public concern into electoral and legislative power. We don’t ask supporters to choose between caring about animals and caring about people, because the issues were never actually separate. Legislators who weaken factory farming regulations often weaken labor and environmental protections too. The corporate lobbies fighting the Save Our Bacon Act also fight against rural community health protections. City Council members who pass Romanch’s Law can also be held accountable on labor rights, public safety, and environmental justice.

This is why our work stays political, not just educational. We push to pass Romanch’s Law, defend the octopus farming ban once it’s signed, oppose Save Our Bacon Act provisions in the Farm Bill, enforce the NYC foie gras ban, and end wild animal pet sales. None of these wins happen through awareness alone. They happen because voters organize, lobby, and show up at the ballot box for candidates who understand animal rights intersectionality and act on it.

Get Involved

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Animal protection is human rights work. Voters For Animal Rights builds the political power to prove it.