Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Listening is also a form of witnessing.
For forty years, Gail Eisnitz went undercover inside slaughterhouses and factory farms, documenting practices the public rarely sees and institutions often refuse to confront. She recorded what happens when suffering becomes routine, when speed matters more than life, and when systems depend on people choosing not to know.
Gail is the chief investigator for the Humane Farming Association and a recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Medal for outstanding achievement in animal welfare. Her work helped expose the shocking underbelly of the U.S. meat industry and contributed to public and legislative scrutiny that had never existed before.
Her new memoir, Out of Sight, isn’t just an investigation into animal abuse. It’s the story of a person whose body was failing her while she was trying to expose a system failing animals — and of how being disbelieved, medically and institutionally, shaped the course of her life.
This episode contains descriptions some listeners may find confronting. Not because they are exaggerated — because they are ordinary.
It’s about what it costs to witness, and ultimately, survival and hard-won triumph.
-
OCD was the first of two neurological conditions that would hijack Gail’s body, brain and very being. How did the isolation and alienation she felt ultimately propel her to spend her life speaking out for the most isolated and alienated among us?
-
As a child, animals became a refuge for Gail. When did that refuge turn into a sense of responsibility—she weren’t just drawn to animals, but compelled to protect them?
-
When was the first time Gail went undercover?
-
What was most shocking—not just about the animals’ suffering, about how normalised that suffering had become for slaughterhouse workers?
-
Gail has documented how skyrocketing production line speeds affect animals during slaughter. What does “speed” actually looks like on the kill floor?
-
Gail encountered repeated refusals by law enforcement to prosecute clear violations.
-
Gail’s work helped trigger congressional outrage and the first-ever funding for enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.
-
Gail gathered evidence that network television producers deemed “too disturbing” to air. And yet the practices themselves continue daily.
-
The personal cost of seeing such horror.
-
How litigation may be the most promising path forward for creating meaningful change for farmed animals.
-
Gail spent years insisting that unseen suffering matters—how did fighting to be believed about your own health mirror the fight to have your investigations taken seriously?
-
Out of Sight is a memoir that readers describe as a suspenseful detective story. Why was it important for Gail to place herself—her body, her fear, her persistence—inside the narrative?
-
After four decades in this work, what does Gail want listeners to understand most about animals in the food system—and about their own power to either sustain or challenge it?
As much as i have huge gratitude and respect for every single vegan, I think it’s those doing the work I couldn’t face that I’m most grateful for.
Undercover investigators are probably at the top of that list. If simply sitting with loved ones while animals are being eaten can feel heartbreaking to me, I genuinely can’t comprehend the cost of witnessing it first-hand — and then having to act normal, build trust, and go back again the next day.
Even for those of us who are more aware than we sometimes wish we were of what happens inside factory farms and slaughterhouses… and even when we try to live in alignment with our values… there is still value in bearing witness through conversations like this.
It supports the people doing the work many of us likely couldn’t. And it helps us keep the strength to keep speaking up for the individuals whose stories Gail has spent her life bringing into the light.
That’s it for this week in Healthification.
This journal and daily planner follows a twelve month format however is not dated so it is perfect to use at ANY time of the year.
Connect with Kate across the socials: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube and her Skool Community, Plant Positive.
With love and gratitude plant friends.
EATING PLANT BASED IS SO MUCH EASIER THAN I EXPECTED!