Seeing the Bigger Picture

Some recent articles ("Idaho dairy producer battles U.S. military," "Valley Milk in Iraq?," "Dairyman wants to send milk to Middle East," "Idaho Dairymen Fights with U.S. Military") on the local dairy industries connections to US militarism illustrates the complex interrelations and interconnections of various forms of privilege and oppression.

As a vegan and a peace activist it would be too easy to condemn the company, Gossner Foods, and the contractor, Steve Cann, as exploiters of nonhuman animals and aspiring war profiteers. As true as all that might be, it ignores how oppression is "an interlocking system that involves ideological control as well as domination and control of the social institutions and resources of the society, resulting in a condition of privilege for the agent group relative to the disenfranchisement and exploitation of the target group." Blaming ignores the interlocking system, and that's what really needs to be addressed.

The dairy industry dominates agricultural in the Cache Valley region. Gossner Foods is the nations largest supplier of Swiss cheese, and provides its Ultra-High Temperature milk to all the domestic military bases, and the military exports it to colonial outposts in Puerto Rico, Panama, Korea, and Honduras. The occupying forces in Afghanistan and Iraq receive condensed milk from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which means the "war on terror" cut Gossner's shipments to the military in half. If the military would purchase its product for the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq it would increase the shipments to the military by as much as 500 percent.

While only scratching the surface there's a lot going on in this scenario. I doubt it can be addressed it in a piecemeal fashion. You can't ignore all the other issues by just focus on, say, the exploitation of the cows. There are multiple cycles of exploitation going on all at once.

Ideologically there's not only speciesism, but also capitalism, militarism, (neo)colonialism, patriotism, nationalism, white supremacy, and "common sense" views of the family, diet and nutrition, masculinity, agriculture, etc. And we can't address these ideological controls without also addressing social institutions that encourage and perpetuate them, like economic, educational, historical, state, legal, and military institutions.

If we thought of it as, say, just a capitalist problem then we'd need to ignore that Cann and Gossners could increase their capital by urging the government to bring the troops home. Cann has one son currently serving in the military, another son who served and returned with a broken back, and a third son who is considering enlisting. Obviously there is more than a desire to just make a profit going on here.