The automatic doors rush to open and suck customers into the the vast grocery store. Colors from fruits, vegetables and packaged products radiate from each direction, attracting the hungry stomachs that have arrived. Picking up items off your grocery list while reading each label, making sure it’s the healthiest one. But what’s not on that 4 by 4 inch label? The truth. For example, the chicken you just grabbed for dinner. That chicken being put into a dark compact area till it can’t walk anymore due to being forced to eat corn instead of grass and seeds. Then being sent in to get slaughtered and packaged by illegal workers hands in mass production. To where you see it, a perfect concealed package that reads “100% all natural.” So why …show more content…
Once consumers are exposed to reality, they feel immediate guilt. But supporting evidence shines light on the truth. The harsh reality of the in captivity of hundreds of animals plagued by abundance of excessive amounts of feces and bacteria lies on our plates for each meal. These animals face “humane slaughter” under United States regulations. According to Sarah McColl, who specializes in humane slaughter, “In short, “humane slaughter” means that farmed animals are supposed to be “stunned” (rendered unconscious or insensible to pain) before their throats are slit” (McColl). Animals are given no respect under the laws and are being slaughtered conscious, also proven through “Federal inspectors have gone on record stating that, due to inspection loopholes developed in collusion with the meat industry, they are virtually powerless to enforce humane slaughter laws” (McColl). Huge meat corporations such as Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef all purposely try to avoid the truth to what they are doing by preventing footage of their farms to be leaked to the …show more content…
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Moreover, this system of mass farming leads to single crop farms, which are ecologically unsafe, and the unnatural treatment of animals (Kingsolver 14). These facts are presented to force the reader to consider their own actions when purchasing their own food because of the huge economic impact that their purchases can have. Kingsolver demonstrates this impact by stating that “every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we
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
In recent years, it is not even necessary to turn on the news to hear about the bad reputation farming has been getting in recent years. What with the media focusing on things like drugs in animals and Pink Slime, or Lean Finely Textured Beef, it is a wonder that people are eating “non-organic” foods. However, many pro-farming organizations having been trying to fight back against these slanders. Still, the battle is not without heavy competition, and a good portion of it comes from Chipotle, a fast food Mexican restaurant that claims to only use completely organic ingredients in their food. Chipotle is constantly introducing advertisements claiming to have the natural ingredients while slandering the name of farmers everywhere. Perhaps the most well-known is “The Scarecrow,” a three minute ad that features some of the most haunting images Chipotle has ever featured. While “The Scarecrow” uses tear-inducing images and the almost eerie music to entice the audience to the company’s “free-range farming” ideals, it lacks substantial logos yet, it still
Steindom, Joel. “My Food Manifesto, Part One: The Bad News.” Steidom.com. Ed. Joel Steindom, Heather Steindom. 2007. 24 July 2008. .
With regulations being set and laws enacted, the United States has seen a change for the better within the food industry and for the consumers overall. As a result, as much as a company is willing to cut on cost, without the consumers, every business in any industry will become bankrupt. The power is in the consumer and as long as consumers are educated properly and willing to speak up, there is a bright future ahead. However, because not everything can be seen, it is important to have books such as The Jungle and authors like Upton Sinclair to let people know what is going on and what not everyone is able to see. In doing so, this will raise awareness, create transparency and demand that companies practice ethically for the betterment of the
In the documentary, Food Inc., we get an inside look at the secrets and horrors of the food industry. The director, Robert Kenner, argues that most Americans have no idea where their food comes from or what happens to it before they put it in their bodies. To him, this is a major issue and a great danger to society as a whole. One of the conclusions of this documentary is that we should not blindly trust the food companies, and we should ultimately be more concerned with what we are eating and feeding to our children. Through his investigations, he hopes to lift the veil from the hidden world of food.
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 brutally inflict pain upon the animals, not exclusively in the final moments as they are being slaughtered, but for the most part, during their entire life. Many animals know nothing other than a life in a dark, crowded barn or factory treated as meat before they are even killed. These terrible conditions blatantly show that we do not care about these animals and we simply rear and kill them in order to satisfy our trivial interests. The cruelty imposed upon these helpless animals is shocking and it is not rare for people to turn a blind eye to the brutality. Another commonplace would be for a meat consumer to say that humans are “ends in themselves, while everything other than a person can only have value for a person” (C. Vlastos). People believe that animals are on this earth simply for human consumption, which can be easily
One objection Norcross states in his essay is that “perhaps most consumers are unaware of the treatment of animals, before they appear in neatly wrapped packages on supermarket s...
The strongest argument against the dog meat industry centers on the treatment of the dogs that are often killed by ?beating, strangling, [and] boiling? instead of more humane methods such as electrocution. Unnecessary cruelty against animals is universally considered wrong, and is in many cases illegal, and that is what makes this argument effective. Saletan addresses this argument logically, with the simple fact that in the interest of humane treatment of dogs ?South Korean lawmakers are proposing to legalize, license, and regulate the industry.? This simple fact exposes a fundamental hypocrisy within the opposing viewpoint. Saletan argues that it is the same activists who base their arguments on ending cruelty against dogs who are trying to keep new, more humane methods from being adopted. The activists condemn and deplore cruel ...
Should opting out of life be an option for those who are sick or hurt people? With euthanasia, that is something now available for terminally ill patients. “The definition of euthanasia is the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma, or the intentional termination of life or the intentional interruption of procedures intended to prolong life by a physician” (Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine). Other names it is known by is mercy killing, or assisted suicide. It is also referred to as quietus, meaning death or something that causes death, but is very rarely called that (Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia). Euthanasia is illegal in most countries and almost every state
For as long as there have been horse slaughterhouses in the United States, they have been an issue of controversy (Associated Press State and Local Wire, 8/7/01). Currently, only two slaughterhouses that produce horse meat intended...
Our current system of corporate-dominated, industrial-style farming might not resemble the old-fashioned farms of yore, but the modern method of raising food has been a surprisingly long time in the making. That's one of the astonishing revelations found in Christopher D. Cook's "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (2004, 2006, The New Press), which explores in great detail the often unappealing, yet largely unseen, underbelly of today's food production and processing machine. While some of the material will be familiar to those who've read Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" or Eric Schlosser's "Fast-Food Nation," Cook's work provides many new insights for anyone who's concerned about how and what we eat,
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...
Can you imagine going through the pain that animals in slaughterhouses went through? Most people don’t think of that part of it but the real fact is that billions of animals went through a painful life to be killed for food every year. Most people like to keep the thought in there heads that these animals live on beautiful green farms where they are treated great and then have a very peaceful death, and never feel any or little pain. Well that is not the case, these animals are treated very unfairly. The animals in slaughterhouses are given a massive amount of antibiotics, hormones, and drugs to keep them alive in conditions that are so bad they would otherwise kill them.