Suffering of Animals that Are Factory Farmed

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In the article "Most People Are Unaware of How Much Suffering Factory Farming Causes Animals," Iris Sinilong presents the dark realities of factory farming, which remain largely unrepresented by media outlets. In today's culture, eating meat is not only considered the norm, but it is portrayed as being necessary for our survival. Sinilong notes that before the 1940s, meat was generally eaten only on high days and holidays. It was not until shortly after that, when the benefits of injecting animals with antibiotics and vitamin supplements became known, that the consumption of meat “became more prevalent.”
On a daily basis, advertisements endorse eating meat. Large food-chains like McDonalds, Wendy's and KFC rely heavily on the media to further this notion. Sinilong echoes Foucoult’s idea that news media has an obligation to objectively show both sides of this issue to the public, but she presents the case that it pointedly chooses not to. The meat industry spends billions of dollars annually on advertising to influence our notion that eating meat is beneficial and has no ill-effects on the animals. The fact that ten billion animals are slaughtered each year to feed our carnivorous society is omitted from public knowledge. According to Sinilong, the media’s negligence has made it so that the average consumer has very little or no knowledge of the treatment of these animals that are killed for our consumption. In one instance that Sinilong cites, CBS turned down a $2 million deal with PETA to air an anti-meat advertisement during one of the Super Bowls. CBS claimed that they did not support advocacy advertisements; however, during the game, they ran an anti-smoking advertisement.
The truth that our society is kept ignorant of is that animals that are factory farmed are held in confinement buildings where they are penned up twenty-four hours a day. They usually do not encounter very much human contact as mostly everything, from food to water and artificial sunlight, is automated, Sinilong writes. Chickens, some of the most tortured animals, are packed tightly in cages, must stand on their own feces, and in most cases cannot even spread their wings. Many different factory farm animals lead tortured lives on a daily basis. Veal calves are kept in total darkness and virtually starved to make their flesh tender and pale.

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