Breeding sows are confined in gestation stalls, pigs have their tails cut off without anesthesia, calves are tethered by their necks in veal crates, and egg-laying hens are debeaked and kept in cages too small to spread their wings in; in a factory farm, animals are treated as commodities. This vivid imagery depicts the facts pertaining to animals. The search for solutions has focused on two paths; one reforming the system and instituting more humane standards, and the second promoting veganism so that fewer animals are bred, nurtured, and slaughtered. While few animal activists disagree with promoting veganism, some believe that campaigning for reforms, and humane labeling is counter-productive. Humane standards can either be required by law, or instituted voluntarily by farmers. Farmers who voluntarily agree to higher humane standards are either opposed to factory farming, or are trying to appeal to consumers who prefer meat from humanely raised and slaughtered animals. There is no single definition of “humane meat,” and many animal activists would say that the term is an oxymoron. Different meat producers and organizations have their own humane standards by which they abide. Humane standards might include larger cages, no cages, natural feed, less painful methods of slaughter, or prohibition of practices such as tail docking or debeaking. In some cases, campaigns target retailers or restaurants instead of the actual producers, and pressure the companies to purchase animal products only from producers who raise the animals according to certain voluntary standards. Societies individuality is split by advocates and opponents; is there a fine line between truth and falsehood, or is animal slaughter for diet always inhumane?
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...eryone would be a vegan. Unfortunately, that consciousness-raising choice is not left up to just anyone. For the vast majority of the population, the total involvement with this process consists of purchasing bloodless little packages that bear no resemblance to the living animals they once were. If humans are to go on shielding themselves from the truth about intensively raised farm animals, then the least parents can do is stop lying to their children about it. For most of us, the act of deliberately killing an animal would be a disquieting act.
One way would be to insist on offering a vegetarian lunch option at least once a week on school menus. Children could learn to eat what their counterparts around the world eat. On a healthy note, children would be given a break from government surplus, like milk and cheeses, which are traditionally high in sodium and fat.
The argumentative article “More Pros than Cons in a Meat-Free Life” authored by Marjorie Lee Garretson was published in the student newspaper of the University of Mississippi in April 2010. In Garretson’s article, she said that a vegetarian lifestyle is the healthy life choice and how many people don’t know how the environment is affected by their eating habits. She argues how the animal factory farms mistreat the animals in an inhumane way in order to be sources of food. Although, she did not really achieve the aim she wants it for this article, she did not do a good job in trying to convince most of the readers to become vegetarian because of her writing style and the lack of information of vegetarian
Jonathan Safran Foer wrote “Eating Animals” for his son; although, when he started writing it was not meant to be a book (Foer). More specifically to decide whether he would raise his son as a vegetarian or meat eater and to decide what stories to tell his son (Foer). The book was meant to answer his question of what meat is and how we get it s well as many other questions. Since the book is a quest for knowledge about the meat we eat, the audience for this book is anyone that consumes food. This is book is filled with research that allows the audience to question if we wish to continue to eat meat or not and provide answers as to why. Throughout the book Foer uses healthy doses of logos and pathos to effectively cause his readers to question if they will eat meat at their next meal and meals that follow. Foer ends his book with a call to action that states “Consistency is not required, but engagement with the problem is.” when dealing with the problem of factory farming (Foer).
American consumers think of voting as something to be done in a booth when election season comes around. In fact, voting happens with every swipe of a credit card in a supermarket, and with every drive-through window order. Every bite taken in the United States has repercussions that are socially, politically, economically, and morally based. How food is produced and where it comes from is so much more complicated than the picture of the pastured cow on the packaging seen when placing a vote. So what happens when parents are forced to make a vote for their children each and every meal? This is the dilemma that Jonathan Safran Foer is faced with, and what prompted his novel, Eating Animals. Perhaps one of the core issues explored is the American factory farm. Although it is said that factory farms are the best way to produce a large amount of food at an affordable price, I agree with Foer that government subsidized factory farms use taxpayer dollars to exploit animals to feed citizens meat produced in a way that is unsustainable, unhealthy, immoral, and wasteful. Foer also argues for vegetarianism and decreased meat consumption overall, however based on the facts it seems more logical to take baby steps such as encouraging people to buy locally grown or at least family farmed meat, rather than from the big dogs. This will encourage the government to reevaluate the way meat is produced. People eat animals, but they should do so responsibly for their own benefit.
Factory farming is often a sore spot for American and other first world consciences. Even those that are ethically comfortable with consumption of animal products are often discomfited by the large-scale maltreatment of living creatures that is present in contemporary agribusiness. Writings that are similar to Peter Singer's “Down on the Factory Farm”, which depicts the multitude of unnatural horrors and abuses that billions of farm animals undergo before they are ultimately slaughtered for our use, make up the majority of the commentary on the subject. There seem to be few writers with the audacity to dispute the popular outcry that there is something morally reprehensible in our systematic exploitation of other species. Yet, as Stanley Curtis shows in “The Case for Intensive Farming of Food Animals”, a less emotionally charged examination is likely to be necessary if we have any aspirations of revising the current model into one that is not only more humane, but also sustainable for the environment and for the growing human population. Though our sympathies are immediately swayed by Singer's work, we must remain cognisant that, as Singer himself said, “We can't take our feelings as moral data, immune from rational criticism” (The Lives of Animals 89). Though Curtis's work seems at times overly cold in its utilitarian views, it provides an undoubtedly useful contrast to the call-to-arms of Singer's work. Evaluating them in tandem is likely the best approach to deriving a model that placates our moral dissatisfaction while meeting the requirements set forth by reality.
Throughout the last century the concern of animals being treated as just a product has become a growing argument. Some believe that animals are equal to the human and should be treated with the same respect. There are many though that laugh at that thought, and continue to put the perfectly roasted turkey on the table each year. Gary Steiner is the author of the article “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable”, that was published in the New York Times right before Thanksgiving in 2009. He believes the use of animals as a benefit to human beings is inhumane and murderous. Gary Steiner’s argument for these animal’s rights is very compelling and convincing to a great extent.
“We take care of animals, and the animals take care of us.” (Rollin 212). The preceding phrase is a policy that American farmers in the old west lived their lives by. Modern farmers live do not live their lives anywhere near to this phrase because they own factory farms, and the whole reason for having a factory farm is to fit as many animals in a small space as possible in order to maximize profit. Factory Farms, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) first appeared in the 1920s, right after Vitamins A and D, because if animals are given these vitamins in their diets, exercise and sunlight are not necessities for the animals to grow anymore (In Defense of Animals 1). The growing number of factory farms is coupled with the decreasing population of rural areas, which means that many people are beginning to factory farm because it yields a higher profit (“Agricultural Sciences” 170). In the 1950s, the average number of chickens on a given egg farm in the United States was 100, but now the average number is a shocking 10,000 chickens (“Factory Farms” 4). The reason for the increase of chickens has to do with new and cheaper technology developed just after World War II. The new technology increased the number of chickens, while it had the opposite effect on dairy and meat cows, their numbers went in the other direction. The number of cows used for milk was cut by more than half between 1950 and 2000, because farmers discovered new and more efficient methods for milking cows (Weeks 4). Many activists for animals’ rights are concerned about the methods used by factory farmers because they confine their animals into tight spaces and since there are so many of them in a small ...
The Meat industry treats their workers the same way they treat the animals. They treat these living beings as if they were worthless. Slaughterhouses kill thousands of hogs a day and pack thousands chickens tightly together like a jail-cell. These ani...
In Alastair Norcross’ paper, “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases” he describes a situation in which a man, Fred, has lost his ability to enjoy the gustatory pleasure of chocolate due to a car accident. However, it is known that puppies under duress produce cocoamone, the hormone Fred needs in order to enjoy chocolate again. Since no one is in the cocoamone business, Fred sets up twenty six puppy cages, and mutilates them resulting in cocoamone production in the puppy’s brains. Each week he slaughters a dog and consumes the cocoamone. When he is caught, he explains to the judge and jury that his actions are no different from factory farming because he is torturing and killing puppies for gustatory pleasure similar to how factory farms torture and kill cows, chickens, etc. for other people’s gustatory pleasure. You, the reader are meant to think that this is unacceptable, and therefore, denounce factory farming. Although there are many valid objections to this argument, I am in agreement with Norcross and shall be supporting him in this paper. I think the two most practical objections are that (1) most consumers don’t know how the animals are treated whereas Fred clearly does, and (2) if Fred stops enjoying chocolate, no puppies will be tortured, but if a person becomes a vegetarian, no animals will be saved due to the small impact of one consumer. I shall explain the reasoning behind these objections and then present sound responses in line with Norcross’ thinking, thereby refuting the objections.
In the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, the author talks about, not only vegetarianism, but reveals to us what actually occurs in the factory farming system. The issue circulating in this book is whether to eat meat or not to eat meat. Foer, however, never tries to convert his reader to become vegetarians but rather to inform them with information so they can respond with better judgment. Eating meat has been a thing that majority of us engage in without question. Which is why among other reasons Foer feels compelled to share his findings about where our meat come from. Throughout the book, he gives vivid accounts of the dreadful conditions factory farmed animals endure on a daily basis. For this reason Foer urges us to take a stand against factory farming, and if we must eat meat then we must adapt humane agricultural methods for meat production.
As a human, we possess certain rights that protect us in society, however the animals we raise for food live under a much more complicated system that constantly changes. Americans have recently begun to protest animal treatment, especially in the meat industry. Many animal rights groups claim that animal farming is an inhuman practice that violates the rights of all living creatures. Farmers believe that animal right shouldn't change as any changes could cost them millions in new technology to safely care for the animals. The American farming industry poses several moral issues about animal rights which possess no easy solution, however new alternatives appear to have answers for this growing dilemma.
There are many debates around the world about the topic of animal abuse. Animal abuse in the food industry has become a major problem due to the cruel treatment of animals. Most of the world's population might think that animal cruelty is only found in homes and on the street, but they forget about the other forms of animal abuse that affect the food industry. Large contributors to animal abuse are due to fishing methods, animal testing, and slaughterhouses. "Animals have always been a major part of our society in history and they have played huge roles in agriculture" (ASPCA). Factory farming is a system of confining chickens, pigs, and cattle under strictly controlled conditions. Slaughterhouses are places where animals are killed
The issue of meat consumption has been a controversial topic on whether to allow the practice or discontinue it, non-meat eaters argue it’s unethical because it is abusive to animals. On the other hand, meat consumers argue that eating meat is ethical as long as meat eaters are conscious of how their meat is collected and the treatment of livestock is fair. The consumption of meat is an act that an individual decides whether to partake in or not. Therefore, the option of eating meat should not be completely taken away, but it should be limited. Eating meat ties in with vegetarian and vegan diets, in the sense that both have to follow guidelines to create an ethical approach to eating any grown foods. The consumption of food is ethical when
We neatly separate animals into relatively artificial categories – “pets”, “wild animals”, and “farm animals”. These categories affect how we treat those within the category. For instance, our treatment of farm animals would be illegal if applied towards pets. If a shed filled with cages was then crammed by dogs so tightly that limits them to stretch or move freely, one would face strong social and legal sanction, but would probably differ in the case for chickens. According to two recent studies by Kristof Dhont and Gordon Hodson, it was observed that conservatives consume more meat and exploit animals more because they dismiss the threat that vegetarianism and veganism supposedly pose to traditions and cultural practice, and they feel more entitled to consume animals given human “superiority”. Aside from that, the study also examined the possibility of both conservatives and socialists in simply preferring the taste of meat thus consuming them. It appeared that the conservatives are more likely to consume more meat for reasons related to ideology, even after statistically removing the influence of hedonistically liking the taste of meat from the
Factory farms have portrayed cruelty to animals in a way that is horrific; unfortunately the public often does not see what really goes on inside these “farms.” In order to understand the conditions present in these factory farms, it must first be examined what the animals in these factory farms are eating. Some of the ingredients commonly used in feeding the animals inside factory farms include the following: animal byproducts, plastic, drugs and chemicals, excessive grains, and meat from members of the same species. (Adams, 2007) These animals are tortured and used for purely slaughter in order to be fed on. Typically large numbers of animals are kept in closed and tight confinements, having only little room to move around, if even that. These confinements can lead to suffocation and death and is not rare. Evidence fr...
Ever since the world?s first fast food restaurant started business, it has been responsible for the death of 50 billion animals worldwide each year. It?s an astounding number, yet the slaughtering is still increasing rapidly. The irresistible taste of heaven keeps the cash coming in, and keeps the people addicted. ?Meat is an essential part of our food-chain.? One might say. ?We can?t all live our lives being vegetarians!? It?s true that we can?t stop the butchering of animals. But if you were to witness the horrifying pictures of slaughter houses, you?d think differently. The pigs all have their skin sliced open to revel the organs, while chickens hang with their furless wings flapping. Just because of our selfish needs, we?re treating them with violence and cruelty. It is time for some real action, to correct our mistakes. It was wrong in the first place, to slaughter others for our own benefits. And it would be more so, if we don?t put a stop to it. And because we humans are...