How Should we Call this Crime

The historian Yuval Noah Harari said that "Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history". I've never heard anyone say that what we do to wild animals is the worst crime in history, and although 'industrial farming' might not be the best name for the slaughter industry, we don’t even have a clear word to describe the mass killing wild animals during the last 50 years.

The word "Genocide" is comprised of the Greek word for race, or type, and the Latin word for killing. Animal Genocide is the systematic killing of wildlife in numbers beyond measurement. How many did we kill? No one knows, but just for fishes it's more than a thousand billion sentient individuals. The environmental terminology creates a world-image that distracts us from the simple but horrifying truth: we are losing our very basic humanity as we exterminate trillions of free beings who do not belong to the small human elite. We are perpetuating a crime against animality, a significant part of which is carried out by weapons of mass destruction, such as trawlers (a kind of marine hunting slaughterhouse, a "boat") that are dragging nets across the sea and killing everything caught inside.

• Here is a deeper discussion of myself and other advocates about wild animal genocide and the environmental terminology (A similar version was published in French in L’Amorce magazine)
• I favor the term "animal genocide" because it shifts the dialogue from biology to social science, opening up a discussion about victims, survivors, weapons of mass destruction, crimes against animality, and perhaps can lead to discussion about the role of international organizations like the UN in preventing this crime.
• While environmental language has evolved in recent years, with movements like Extinction Rebellion changing the discourse, I'd prefer terms like "Extermination Rebellion." I'm not suggesting everyone should adopt this terminology, but considering the immense suffering of wild animals, I think such approach can have an important role.
• Even animal activists are falling for the environmental terminology, hiding the sentient behind words. They say stuff like "the meat industry is causing deforestation", but did you ever hear someone say "the meat industry is killing wild monkeys?"