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American food industry
American food industry
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Before my mother immigrated to America she lived on a cramped farm in Michoacan, Mexico. There, her family owned chickens, goats, and a couple of cows. These farm animals were not there as pets, not as friends to play with, but as food for the entire family of 8. Being at the age of 6, she did not understand that her favorite cow would someday be on her dinner plate sitting next to mayo smothered corn. So as a blissfully ignorant child, she became friends with one of the cows. She named her “girasol”, meaning sunflower, because she was the only animal on the farm that lied out in the sun while the others rested in the cool shade under the trees. Every morning she would wake up with a childish grin and help her dad feed and groom the animals. …show more content…
The production of cows is split three ways: dairy, meat, and veal and each industry is familiar with animal cruelty. The main problem in common is overproduction thus overcrowding. While factory farming can be beneficial as means for food production, the cattle that is it overproducing undergo a tremendous amount of physical suffering. Before being sent to the slaughterhouses, hundreds of cows are confined on one feedlot forced to eat sleep and stand in their own manure. Due to the ingredients in their feeding, they are subjected to disease and other health problems that come from their excrements. A typical healthy cow’s diet is to eat grass, yet in factory farms they are being fed corn. Evidently, the corn in their feeding has evolved into an e.coli strain in their bodies and when they defecate they spread the disease to every other cow (Food Inc.). That is not to say that all cows in these farms have diseases, but it is safe to say that many of them will be subject to become ill if they are in exposed to these conditions for a long period of time and are not treated accordingly. Another problem is mutilation among the cattle. According to Farm Sanctuary, handlers cut off the tails of the cows with the argument that it improves hygiene. Yet, they need their tails to swat away flies and cutting it off causes chronic pain. Other forms of mutilations include branding, dehorning, and teeth clipping, all of which are done without anesthetic (aspca.org). To go through such mutilations is painful enough but having to endure it without any anesthetic to stop the pain is beyond
It is not just the animals who are being treated wrongly. The workers are vulnerable and suffer from injuries on a daily basis. This workforce requires so much protection, such as chainmail outfits to protect themselves from tools. From cuts, sprains, to amputations, “ The injury rate in a slaughterhouse is about three times higher than the rate in a typical American factory.” (238). Many immigrants come to the states, some illegally. Companies give their supervisors bonuses when they have little reported injuries as a reward for a spectacular job. Regardless, these supervisors do not make attempts to make the work environment safer. They threaten the employees with their jobs. They will put injured employees on easier shifts to heal so it will not look suspicious as to why they are in pain. Next to failing to report injuries, women in the slaughterhouses suffer from sexual assault. Male coworkers pressure women into dating and sex. Reported cases include men using animal parts on them in an explicit manner, making work another kind of nightmare. All this corruption and lack of respect for workers is all for a cheap meal people buy when they have the
Factory farming is bad and needs to be fixed. Animals who are to be slaughter for food should be killed in more humane ways. Cows that are boiled or shot with a stun gun have a slow and painful death. Their last minutes of life are remembered with suffering and pain. Animals provide us with the food and nutrition we need and we take it
Factory farming began in the 1920s soon after the discovery of vitamins A and D. Shirley Leung said, when these vitamins are added to feed, animals no longer require exercise and sunlight for growth (B2). This allowed large numbers of animals to be raised indoors year-round. The greatest problem that was faced in raising these animals indoors was the spread of disease, which was fought against in the 1940s with the development of antibiotics. Farmers found they could increase productivity and reduce the operating costs by using machines and assembly-line techniques. Unfortunately, this trend of mass production has resulted in incredible pain and suffering for the animals. Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals to encourage high productivity. In the fast food industry, animals are not considered animals at all; “they are food producing machines” (BBC). They are confined to small cages with metal bars, ammonia-filled air and artificial lighting or no lighting at all. They are subjected to horrible mutilations: beak searing, tail docking, ear cutting and castration. The worst thing is that ...
We should be concerned about the health of the animals that we are eating because if they are not consuming any healthy food we will not get our required nutrients. In the movie Food Inc. it shows how cows are only supposed to eat grass which is essential to them however we are now feeding them corn which makes the cows bigger and fatter faster than usual but there are many things wrong with it. This could cause Cows to raise the acid level this also creates existence for the dangerous disease E. Coli. E. Coli is a bacteria that is inside your intestines that helps you break down food. When cows are fed corn it also decreases the healthy acids such as Omega-3 and increases Omega-6 which is unhealthy. We should also care about their living conditions because a cow is in one area for most of the day just eating corn and when cows eat corn they tend to poop a lot. It is crowded in the eating area for cows so when they poop it falls on the ground and they eat so much corn that they just keep pooping so eventually they start stepping in it and this would cause them to get diseases. Some farmers when they slaughter them they do check for diseases but some don’t, so the diseases travel with the cow and onto your dinner plate which means that you could be eating an infected cow without knowing it. This could give you diseases and it could cause death. In Food Inc. they showed an example of a boy called Kevin who died because of consuming some unsanitary meat. He got E. Coli and died 12 days later. This proves that this should not be taken lightly because many people die from diseases similar to this one.
Animals trapped in factory farms are severely abused and tortured from birth to death. Chickens sometimes will be starved for up to 2 weeks and given no water to shock their bodies into moulting, chickens and hens will have their beaks removed to prevent fighting between other animals. Pigs will get their tails cut off to stop other pigs biting them off. These cruel procedures are done to minimise as few of animals dying as possible so more product can be created by the farmer. Within factory farms, animals are abused with overuse of antibiotics to prevent disease and maximise their body growth to create a higher yield of product. According to Animal Rights Action, 2 out of 3 farms are now factory farmed worldwide and factory farming is only increasing this is leading to more animals being raised for slaughter, abused and tortured, mentally and physically. This is not fair. How would you feel losing your child minutes after it's born? As within factory farms, female cows get their calves are taken away from them within minutes they are born never to be seen again. This leaves these poor female cows depressed which causes them to lose weight and because of this are slaughtered as farmers want to maximise their yield of
Animals were once raised in a more humane and sanitary manner, but in the modern age of factory farming, animal cruelty has become common with large farm complexes. In reality these animals are housed in conditions worse than sweat shops. Under these conditions the animals are more prone to contracting illnesses due to the high amounts of bacterial growth. Furthermore, animals are fed sub-standardized feed such as genetically modified corn, which is low in nutrition, and does not contain the animal’s natural and essential dietary needs.
As can be seen throughout history with events such as the industrial revolution, a desire for high production and high profits often times leads to conditions that are unsafe and inhumane. Today we have realized this and made many reforms to abolish this kind of callous behavior, yet these reforms have not been extended to apply to the animals that are daily abused at factory farms. In order for these operations to have the high amount of output they do they must train their workers to desensitize themselves to the plight of the animals. At a typical slaughterhouse approximately 250 cows are killed every hour, this rush forces workers to shift their view of the animals to become mere objects of production, and in effect promotes inhumane treatment to force cooperation (Factory Farming: The Truth From Behind The Barn Door).
This story Animal Farm by George Orwell is a novel about an animal revolution over an oppressive farmer. The irony in the story comes when the pigs turn into the very thing revolted against. They exhibit the same cruelty by treating the other animals the same or even worse than previous owners. This cycle of cruelty is shown in the Russian revolution by Joseph Stalin who is represented by Napoleon in the story. Cruelty in animal farm is shown by the human’s treatment of the animals, and the animal’s eventual treatment of each other and the ironic characteristics of the two.
How would you like it if you were used in an experiment to see if the mascara your girlfreind used was safe? And then when they were done with you, they disposed of you and killed you off as if you didn’t matter. Well that’s what is being done to animals. They are being tested on. Sometimes scientist give animals radioactive material to eat to see how fast they die. If you know that the animal is going to die, why would you do something so inhumane for no apperant reason?
Animal-rights advocates say the rule would make it easier to shut down unscrupulous commercial operations that confine breeding females at length, depriving them of food, water and veterinary care and leaving them outdoors to freeze in the winter and roast in the summer as they give birth to litter after litter of profitable pups- (Chebium). Animals don’t have a voice; people have to be the voice for them. Animals have no way to help themselves because people make them do what people want them to. They cannot talk back to say that they do not like or want to do what people make them do, people have to go off on what is right. Animals are living creatures they need food, water, and to be taken care of or they could die. People take advantage of animals because people look at them and think since they are not human their lives are not important. When we think they are not worth anything people start neglecting animals.
Cows are naturally very gentle and calm creatures. These smart and sweet natured animals have been known to go to great lengths to escape slaughterhouses. More than forty-one million of these sensitive animals suffer and die a painful death each year in the United States. When cows are still very young they are burned with hot irons, there testicles are torn or cut off, all without painkillers. Most beef cattle are born in one state, live in another, and are slaughtered in another. The cows who survive the gruesome transportation process are shot in the head with a bolt gun, hung upside down by there legs, and taken onto the killing floor where there throats
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
America focuses heavily on its livestock and crops earning us a major role in global trade as a farming nation. Unfortunately this has led to some poor choices in treatment of our animals. Many farmers who believe in animal rights say that it started back when farmers only tended to fewer animals, “Ownership of farm animals became concentrated in fewer hands, and flocks and herds grew larger. As a result, the individuality of animals was lost to their owners and they began receding from most people's everyday life” (Namit 29). When people lost their connection to the animals that provided their food, the quality of the animal's lives began to dramatically decrease. Consumers constantly pushed farmers to their limits with high quotas. To keep up with demands agriculturalists turned to some unorthodox practices to keep costs low and still maintain their annual quotas; “To raise efficiency and cut costs, farm animals began to be engineered for abnormally rapid weight gain, fed unnatu...
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...
The University of British Columbia, both Vancouver and Okanagan campus have a large hand in local and global research. UBC's website dedicated to explaining animal research at the University cites medical research as its biggest research endeavor. Creating new medicines, procedures and vaccines are all top priority for the university's science departments. The website's front page also highlights the school's dedication to treating the animals humanely using three buzz words popular to the scientific community: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement. Replacement referring to integrating non-animal research methods where possible and reduce the number of animals used through refinement of procedures.