The Truth about Farm Animal Abuse | Teen Ink

The Truth about Farm Animal Abuse

May 31, 2013
By Heatherose BRONZE, Reno, Nevada
Heatherose BRONZE, Reno, Nevada
2 articles 0 photos 3 comments

Throughout history many arguments have been made regarding the questions about factory farms. The main argument is that, animals should be used for food and we can get it anyway that we need to. I disagree; I say that we should use animals for food but in a more humane way. Now I am not saying that we should just stop eating meat altogether, I mean I love meat, we just need to buy organic meat. Buy meat that doesn’t come from those huge factories, we don’t know what these animals are being fed. Animal Cruelty shows how important it is to have compassion, respect and love for animals. Some people think that just domestic animals are abused; they don’t know that the meat that we eat is more abused than some house pets.
Animals around the U.S are mistreated every day and we don’t even know about it. They are kept in small cages often with so little space that they can't even turn around or lie down comfortably. These animals spend their whole lives deprived of exercise so that all their energy goes toward producing flesh, eggs, or milk for human consumption. Some animals are genetically altered to grow faster or to produce much more milk or eggs than they naturally would. When they have finally grown large enough, animals raised for food are crowded onto trucks and transported over many miles through all weather extremes, typically without food or water, to the slaughterhouse. Those who survive this nightmare of a journey will have their throats slit, often while they are still conscious. Many remain conscious when they are plunged into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks or while their bodies are being skinned or hacked apart. These are only some of the things that people do in order to get paid or the food. Many different companies have sent out investigators to find out more about these Slaughterhouses and Factory farms. What they find at these farms is exactly what is above but much worse. They see newly hatched chickens being thrown into a bag only to die a few minutes later by suffocation. They also see cows being kept in tiny spaces with no room to move their tails, only to be later killed for food.

People state that we do these things because, humans have rights and animals don’t. When people say things like that it makes me so angry, what has this world come to when we say that animals don’t have rights. Is it because they can’t speak? Or is it because they are not human and we should treat them as we would a rag doll. We shouldn’t treat animals this way no matter what, there are better ways to get the meat then by killing it at 5-7 weeks old (chicken) or six months(cows). If more people knew about these conditions, they would buy different kind of food, the organic kind. We should treat animals with respect, even if we are going to eat them, at least let them live a little longer and kill them in a humane way instead of torturing the animal. The pictures and videos that you see from Slaughterhouses are real, they were taken by people who want to show us what it is truly like for those animals, and we needed to know. People from the ‘Mercy for Animals’ foundation, go into big farms such as Christensen Farms and Butterball to show the public and try and make cases to stop this. Since 2002, they have been very successful in stopping this abuse from happening, so much so that Kraft Foods, the largest food company in the United States, announced a new policy requiring all its dairy suppliers to phase out the cruel practice of tail docking cattle. This is a huge step in the right direction.
Factory Farm abuse is something that we all should be aware of. We need to know where our meat, cheeses, eggs and milk come from. I am not saying that you should stop eating meat altogether but at least watch the kind that you eat. You never know where it could have came from. Even though the organic is more expensive than the stuff you buy at Wal-Mart, it will be better for you and you would have saved an animal.



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.