Legal precedent and past scholarly research has clearly identified animal abuse as a social problem. This work has linked violence against humans to past violence against animals, but it has not looked at the determinants of animal abuse. Further, studies have identified a positive relationship between legitimized violence in slaughterhouses and community violence, but have not explored the effect of institutionalized commoditization of animal life in the animal production industry on animal abuse. The current study uses OLS regression to address both of these shortcomings, examining the relationship between the animal production industry and animal abuse rates at the state level and finding a significant positive relationship between the strength of the animal production industry and reported animal abuse. Using the theories of institutional social distance and moral dissonance, the paper suggests that this relationship exists because institutional norms about the value and treatment of production animals are transferred to society at large and result in elevated abuse rates.
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