What is…
VIDEO: Humane-Washing Machine
art installation
@ 2025 San Francisco VeganFest
2-min. VIDEO CLIP: Nov. 1, 2025: A full house ‘o vegans and ‘veg-curious’ humans teem & share & graze at the SF Bay Area’s biggest gathering of animal-loving humans. Sponsored by the SF Vegan Society) :
TreeSpirit Project’s “The Humane-Washing Machine” traveling art installation.
“Humane-washing” (or “humanewashing)” is a term to describe the animal agriculture industry’s advertising and public relations campaigns and languaging which hides a simple, brutal truth:
Suffering and an early, unnecessary death is experienced by every one of the approximately 8 billion land animals — and over 2.5 trillion marine animals — that we humans around the world eat, or use for clothing or entertainment each and every year.*
Even while the vast majority of us animal-eating humans proclaim, “I love animals.”
*SOURCE: 2024, OurWorldInData.org
The terminology, words and phrases we use to hide the above truth are so numerous, and so commonplace, they have become largely invisible; they are in the cultural air we breathe, so we can consume animals and buy animal products, every day of every year, and barely ever think about the monstrous cruelty our hehavior inflicts on innocent animals every day of their and our lives. Read why that’s a big problem.
Humane-washing words were created intentionally by the animal agriculture industry, from “small farms” to industry giants, and then promulgated by our culture and mass media. All this supports and perpetuates multi-billion dollar animal “agriculture” businesses worldwide. The industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars to hide and perpetuate the astonishing brutality of how we must treat animals to turn them into food, clothing and use them for entertainment. (Except some specific companion animals like dogs, cats and horses, depending on your country and culture).
Even seemingly innocuous words like “meat,” “pork,” and “beef” are euphemisms for flesh, pig and cow, to hide the cruelty we perpetrate on millions of animals every day, and billion of animals every year.
Humane-Washing Machine art installation
@ 2024 Sonoma County VeganFest
WATCH VIDEO CLIP. See how it works:
The problem isn’t just about us humans eating animals, but about using animals against their will, and at great harm to their well-being, for anything. This is the core message of veganism. READ MORE.
• DOWNLOAD 2-page Humane-Washing Machine FACTSHEET (below)
What’s wrong with buying certified-organic, “ethically-sourced,” “grass-fed” milk? Or “humanely-raised” bacon? Or “free-range” eggs from “cage-free” chickens?
Aren’t these animal products good – – or at least better, less cruel, than their mass-produced alternatives? Meaning “small farms” are better than those awful, giant, industrial “factory farms?”
DOWNLOAD the easy-to-read 2-page “Humane-Washing FACTSHEET” (left) if you think you can handle the truth…
• DOWNLOAD 1-page Humane-Washing Machine TERMS SHEET (below)
Even innocuous sounding, familiar words like “meat,” “pork,” and “beef” replace flesh, pig and cow, to hide the cruelty we perpetrate on millions of animals every day, and billions every years.
In short order this, the 1-page COMMON Humane-Washing TERMS” factsheet (left) answers these reasonable, common questions about animal products.
The disturbing truth is that more and more of the labels on packages of hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, eggs, milk, butter, yogurt, ice cream and of course cheese, cheese, and more (cow’s milk) cheese, please, mislead or outright lie about the unavoidable cruelty hidden behind happy, idyllic words of being kind to animals.
When we billions of humans eat animals and animal products every day, every year, around the world, the inevitable, unavoidable reality is immense cruelty heaped upon billions animals (and trillions of fish, too).
Even though almost every human really does care about the welfare of animals and wouldn’t want to see them suffer! Which is why the animal agriculture industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ad agencies and public relations firms to hide and lie about the truth.
Read the truth, hidden in plain sight, in just this one (facts) sheet. And with the additional resources below. DOWNLOAD HERE.
Humane-Washing Machine art installation Premier
@ 2024 Sonoma County, CA VeganFest
WATCH 60-sec. VIDEO CLIP
“Humane Slaughter” – by Gary Yourofsky
Animal Rights Advocate Gary Yourofsky cuts to the chase about humane-washing terms like “humane slaughter” — 2-min., 13-sec. clip.
• READ ABOUT the “Animal Holocaust” – – which also contributes mightily to our climate emergency.