The Importance Of Animal Agriculture

Roughly 3,000 farm animals are killed every second. That’s about 56 billion animals worldwide every year. (Animal Equality, 2016.) Most animals are raised in factory farms and treated as products, rather than animals. According to the World Food Programme, one in nine people don’t have enough food. That comes out to 795 million people. (2016.) It’s estimated that if the world switched to a vegan diet there would be enough food to feed everybody. It takes thirteen to twenty pounds of grain for one pound of beef, so feeding that to people directly would feed thirteen to twenty times more people. The waste lagoons used are prone to leaks, and create ocean-dead zones in rivers nearby. That water eventually makes it to lakes and oceans. Forests

However, 95% of the human population choose not to see or ignore these facts. (One Green Planet, 2016.) But why? Why do otherwise good, ethical people ignore their conscience and the facts of animal agricultural three times a day? Our identity scripts not only allow us to, but tell us to; because going against them can hurt the way others see us or we see them and directly impact communication. Identity scripts are unspoken rules and ideologies that govern our daily lives. We use them in our relationships and daily habits, like brushing our teeth. We also use them when we decide what we would like to eat. The meat and dairy industries spend billions of dollars to try to take away our views of what goes on in slaughterhouses and on farms. Popular slogans like “Pizza! Pizza!,” “Where’s the beef?,” and “Got Milk?” are plastered everywhere. Starting from a young age in most families children are told that they need milk and meat to survive and to live a long, healthy life. It’s repeated over and over that the best protein source is meat and the only way to get calcium is from milk. Common foods for toddlers include chicken strips and macaroni and cheese. Kids are targeted with ‘Happy Meals’ from McDonalds and ‘King Jr. Meals’ from Burger King. By the time we reach adulthood, we are brainwashed to believe that we need their products to survive or that using them

The organization step is an important part of the way a vegan will be treated by the omnivore they’re talking to. Hopefully, the person has met kind vegans who have used kindness to spread their message. All too often, though, vegans are stereotyped as rude, pushy, or annoying; nobody wants to be “that vegan.” The interpretation step of perception allows people to make whatever they selected and organized meaningful to them. If a vegan is viewed in a good way the person doing the interpretation might consider switching, which is the end goal. If they are interpreted badly the person will most likely develop a negative view of all