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Animal Rights |
The
majority of the world including El Segundo High school consumes meat or
some form of animal products. It is a tradition deeply rooted in society
and most people’s daily lives. With this article I can only hope to
share what I feel is wrong with the consumption of animals and their
by-products .
The way beef is produced is
horrifying. If most people saw with their own eyes or knew how a steak or
burger got onto their plates they would think twice about gluttonously
consuming it. It is required by law that a cow be stunned before it’s
slaughter, so, either a “pistol” that shoots a metal rod into a cows
brain is used, or a electric stunner is used to produce a grand mal
seizure. According to “Meat and poultry” (3-97) shooting a struggling
animal is difficult and the rod often misses. Electric stunning is not
always effective either. The USDA’s “Survey of stunning and
Handling” (1-7-97) states, “ insufficient amperage can cause an animal
to be paralyzed without losing sensibility.” After the cow is stunned,
or not stunned, it is hung upside down and its throat is slit to bleed it
to death. Next, workers make an incision in the cow’s skin and insert a
hose into the cut. Air is pumped into the cut to separate the skin tissue
from the flesh. Workers then cut off the separated skin, which will later
be cleaned and treated and sold as “leather.” The rest is obvious, the
cow is cut up accordingly and the parts are marketed and sold as beef.
Thousands of innocent cows are slaughtered in this fashion, everyday in
order to fill our stomachs and please our taste buds.
Most people think that the
milking of cows is a harmless process and that the Ross Swiss milk we buy
from Ralph’s comes from a happy cow that will never be harmed. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The truth is that ALL milk-producing
cows, whether it is on an organic farm or not, will eventually be killed
using the methods explained above and sold as beef. As cows get older, the
rate at which they produce milk greatly declines. At this point, they stop
being financially profitable. Obviously it would not be part of a huge
money making industry’s policy to keep an unprofitable animal alive,
when they could make money off its dead flesh. Cows have to be impregnated
to produce milk, which they produce steadily for about a year and a half
after a calf is born. After birth, this calf has generally only two
possible fates, neither of which is promising. Male cows are taken from
the mother at birth and fed low quality milk or cheap milk replacer for
about six to eight weeks before being slaughtered. Female cows are either
sent to be slaughtered in the same fashion as the males, or sent to live
on in the same hell as their mothers.
Besides
their eventual slaughter due to lack of production, dairy cows do not lead
a pleasant life. These innocent cows are kept in cramped areas and pumped
full of harmful hormones and steroids such as BHG. These steroids and
chemicals greatly increase milk production to a dangerous degree. In 1940,
according to USDA statistics, cows produced an annual average of 2.3 tons
of milk, by 1996 the average, due to BHG had skyrocketed to 8.3. Some BHG
treated cows have recently produced as much as 28 tons in one year. Sure,
this is great for business and money, which is obviously all that matters
to the dairy industry, but such high milk production leads to udder
ligament damage, lameness, mastitis and metabolic disorders, which often
leads to the premature slaughter of the cows.
The
life of a chicken doesn’t get much better than that of cows. It could be
easily argued that chickens are treated even worse than the life of a cow.
Chickens are not outside roaming around in the barnyard as often thought,
but caged and kept indoors. Many chickens suffer from ammonia burn of the
eyes and nostrils (keratoconjunctivitis) and respiratory conditions due to
extremely strong manure fumes and gases. All poultry are kept in cages
known as battery cages; the cages are cramped together and crowded
conditions. These conditions often become stressful and chickens peck at
each other. To combat stress-related fight injuries, up to 2/3 of their
beaks are cut off with a hot “searing blade.” The law requires
absolutely no painkiller for this operation and cutting delicate tissues
with a burning hot blade causes terrible pain for up to a month. Some
birds even starve because the pain from the operation is so great they
cannot eat.
The
rate of eggs that chickens produce declines later in life, just like with
cows. Once again, greed conquers all, and of course an unprofitable
chicken cannot be kept alive when there are a few extra dollars to be made
due to its slaughter. US hens are “force-molted” at the end of their
egg laying cycle. Force molting is a process in which all food and water
is kept from the hen for several days until it goes into shock and goes
through one extra egg laying cycle.
The
life of other animals used by humans as food or slaves do not get any
better than the lives of cows and chickens.
While nursing their young and kept on their side, mother pigs are
kept in pins so small they can not even turn over or stand on her feet.
That same pig will eventually be slaughtered and its flesh will be sold as
pork. Due to the excessive rate that a sheep’s hair grows back after
being repeatedly cut, they suffer or even die from heat exhaustion. Large
corporations such as Proctor and Gamble test vanity items such as lipstick
and perfume or shampoo and conditioner on animals such as mice, birds and
rabbits. One test for ingestible products appropriately named “the
lethal dose test” involves giving an animal doses of products until they
die. This test is conducted repeatedly to find an accurate average.
Animals are oppressed and treated as machines all over the world, whether
they are cows and chickens, or cats, dogs and monkeys, which are regularly
used for military testing.
The
grain that the U.S. produces annually to feed cattle alone could feed five
times the population of the U.S. But of course we couldn’t stop the mass
production and slaughter of cattle to feed the millions of starving people
in our own country and around the world when there is money to be made and
tasty flesh to be stuffed into our greedy little mouths.
Another
common misconception is that meat production is sanitary and meat
consumption is safe. The truth is that there over 76 million cases of meat
related food poisoning a year. Of that 76 million, 320,000 are
hospitalized and 5,000 die. High levels of cholesterol in red meat is one
of the leading causes of obesity and heart problems. Soymilk has the
nutrients of milk without most of the fat and cholesterol. Substitute meat
and dairy products can taste extremely close to real meat and are
healthier by leaps and bounds.
Now,
I am not saying that everyone who eats meat and dairy products is evil and
means to maliciously hurt animals, I ate meat up until a bit over a year
and a half ago. I can remember that harming animals was not my intent at
all. I feel I was ignorant, and I feel most non-vegetarians/vegans are
too. Either ignorant or just so apathetic and cold hearted that they
aren’t willing to give up a convenience for what they know is wrong and
evil. I feel that there is no disputing that the production and
consumption of animal products is wrong. Millions and millions are
murdered just so humans can eat some tasty veal, steak, pork, chicken
turkey or ham. Harmless animals proved to be nearly as intelligent as dogs
are raped of the milk intended for their calves, slaughtered and skinned
just so we can carry a good-looking leather purse or wear the new Jordans.
Humans cut off a living animals skin so we can wear an expensive leather
jacket, which, let’s face it, is intended to look cool, but really only
makes you look sleazy and dorky. A countless number of innocent beings
have been killed in order for large, powerful, greedy corporations to make
money and keep the truth out of the media and away from the masses. This
vain, greedy, evil tradition of murder and death must stop.
Senior
and follower of the vegan lifestyle Beau Balek says, “People
I know are always saying to me ‘eating animal products is natural.’
And ‘God’ put animals on earth for us,’ but I don’t care. I really
don’t care at all. If putting flesh that an animal had to be slaughtered
for into my mouth, and drinking a creamy liquid from a cows nipple that is
intended for its calf is natural, then I would rather be unnatural. I
would also rather go against ‘God’ than do what’s ‘natural’ in
the eyes of the ignorant murderers of the world”
In
support of the Vegan lifestyle Dexter Scott King, son of Martin
Luther King, Jr. says, “Veganism has given me a higher level of
awareness and Spirituality.” In 1951, George Bernard Shaw wrote,
“ We are the Living Graves of slaughtered beasts, killed to satisfy our
appetites. How can hope to attain in this world the peace we say we are so
anxious for.”
Senior John Diaz says “I am Christian, and my personal
interpretation of Christianity is that nothing should be killed,
especially a harmless, innocent animal. I take ‘thou shall not kill’
very seriously, even when so many others disregard it because eating meat
and dairy is convenient.”