Consider The Lobster Case Study

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In “Consider the Lobster,” Wallace talks about the ethics going into killing lobsters.

Lobsters are boiled alive to make sure they are the freshest possible. They used to be extremely

tough and bad tasting until someone decided to stop killing them until they were being cooked.

This method has been reviewed as one of the most controversial ways of cooking an animal

because many argue the lobster is being tortured (Wallace, 2007). Farm animal abuse is a big

problem today, not only with the actual killing, but mostly with how they are being raised.

The ASPCA defines a factory farm as “a large, industrial operation that raises large

numbers of animals of food.” This is how 99% of farm animals are raised to be slaughtered.

These representatives get the information they need and report it back to leaders

so something can be done about it. These people are usually the only enforcement that goes to

check up on the farms to make sure things are running right (Solotaroff, 2013).

This is not the only issue, unfortunately, that needs addressing. Like stated before, the

slaughtering of most animals is done in a very inhumane way. Like the lobsters, chickens also

get killed in horrid ways. The get put into a blender type device alive that spins them around

until all their feathers are off. This usually kills them quickly but not always. Sometimes the

chickens will suffer for minutes until they finally meet death. All because the farmers cannot be

inconvenienced by finding a different method (McDonald’s Cruelty, 2016). Chickens usually

face the worst conditions for some unknown reason. Some people think it’s because they are not

the cutest animals on the farm. Whatever the reason, there are no federal laws that protect these

animals from abuse (ASPCA, 2016.)

Temple Grandin is an autistic woman who has changed farming. She grew up on a

They were forced to do what the farmers needed to do, and when restrained, they got

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injured or worse. Temple led a study on how the meat of these animals were tougher than when

the animal was allowed to move freely and was restrained the correct way. She developed a new

system that is still used on farms today that improves animal’s final moments (Grandin, 2000).

There are hardly any federal laws in general that protect farm animals. States can make

up their own laws about it, but at the federal level, there are only two set laws. The first is “if an

animal is being transported over state lines, they must be unloaded every 28 hours for rest, food,

and water.” Most transporters find loopholes to this law to ignore it, and it does not apply to any

kind of poultry. The second law “requires that livestock be quickly rendered insensible to pain

before being slaughtered. In addition to excluding poultry, the law exempts certain forms of

religious slaughter” (ASPCA, 2016). Most states have Common Farming Exemptions, which

means if something is being practiced by multiple farms, it is not illegal. The factory farms are

also exempt from the Clean Air Act because of a deal they made with the EPA. So basically