sadaf fucking rules.
Sadaf Azimi
Rhetoric and Argument
Professor Peterson
28 February 2003
The Mayhem of Animal Torment
One definition of veganism is “an attempt to reduce the suffering of animals.” Animal exploitation, animal suffering, and high profile abuse. All of these are atrocities that many vegans try to prevent. When becoming a vegan one expects the general public to question all its assumptions about food and health. Every year, the number of animals killed and the applicable lack of our resources has increased. Over 99 percent of the animals killed in the United States each year die to be eaten. Everyone makes choices that consciously determine the destiny of these animals when deciding what to eat each day. The great majority of animal suffrage in the U.S. is a direct result of people buying animal products for food. Ask yourself: is it worth it? Live to eat, or eat to live?
Do you know how the animals are transported before they are killed? Since they travel in open trucks, the animals may actually become frozen to the trailers. Farmed animals lose at least three percent of their weight, from urination and evacuation of the bowels due to tension. Animals must stand in their own excrement and are unprotected from the extreme weather conditions.
Small family farms are slowly becoming obsolete and being taken over by “factory” farms. These are warehouses where animals are kept in crowded pens or restrained stalls. Chicken meat may be healthy, but did you ever think about what these poor animals undergo? All farmed birds in America are raised in factory farms; they live in crowded, stressful conditions. Chickens living with such environmental factors eventually start pecking at each other. Workers try to end these actions by cutting off two-thirds of the chickens’ beaks with hot knives. This leaves the chickens in pain for weeks. After this process, known as “debeaking”, some birds cannot eat and soon starve. “Broilers” (chickens raised solely for meat) now grow so rapidly that their hearts and lungs are not well developed enough to aid to the rest of their body. This can cause heart failure, and many times death.
Eggs may make part of a healthy breakfast, but what about the poor hens? As many as six hens can live in a battery cage (one of the types of cages used for the housing of animals, usually stacked in several horizontal layers and most commonly used as housing for laying hens) with a wire floor area of 1.7 square feet. These cages cause for very uncomfortable and overpopulated environment. These surroundings lead to lameness, muscle weakness, and bone brittleness. At the end of their egg-laying cycle, hens are either slaughtered or “force-molted”, in which the hens’ food and water are removed for several days in order to shock their bodies into another cycle. There is no benefit in keeping male chicks, as they cannot lay eggs; as a result, they are killed by suffocation in plastic bags, gassing, crushing, decapitation, or sometimes even being ground up alive.
In order for these farm animals to be preserved, wildlife is killed. Native populations of grizzly bears and wolves have been eliminated. The goal for the federal government hunters now is to kill coyotes, bobcats, bison, mountain lions, and hogs. One hundred thousand of these animals are killed each year, by guns, leg-hold traps, neck nooses, or poison.
The point is that all food animals regardless of whether they produce milk or lay eggs, whether they live in a family farm or factory farm, will be slaughtered. Animals in slaughterhouses hear, smell, and many times see the slaughter of other animals before them. IS this ethical? Are all these horror stories worth a yummy meal?
Rhetoric and Argument
Professor Peterson
28 February 2003
The Mayhem of Animal Torment
One definition of veganism is “an attempt to reduce the suffering of animals.” Animal exploitation, animal suffering, and high profile abuse. All of these are atrocities that many vegans try to prevent. When becoming a vegan one expects the general public to question all its assumptions about food and health. Every year, the number of animals killed and the applicable lack of our resources has increased. Over 99 percent of the animals killed in the United States each year die to be eaten. Everyone makes choices that consciously determine the destiny of these animals when deciding what to eat each day. The great majority of animal suffrage in the U.S. is a direct result of people buying animal products for food. Ask yourself: is it worth it? Live to eat, or eat to live?
Do you know how the animals are transported before they are killed? Since they travel in open trucks, the animals may actually become frozen to the trailers. Farmed animals lose at least three percent of their weight, from urination and evacuation of the bowels due to tension. Animals must stand in their own excrement and are unprotected from the extreme weather conditions.
Small family farms are slowly becoming obsolete and being taken over by “factory” farms. These are warehouses where animals are kept in crowded pens or restrained stalls. Chicken meat may be healthy, but did you ever think about what these poor animals undergo? All farmed birds in America are raised in factory farms; they live in crowded, stressful conditions. Chickens living with such environmental factors eventually start pecking at each other. Workers try to end these actions by cutting off two-thirds of the chickens’ beaks with hot knives. This leaves the chickens in pain for weeks. After this process, known as “debeaking”, some birds cannot eat and soon starve. “Broilers” (chickens raised solely for meat) now grow so rapidly that their hearts and lungs are not well developed enough to aid to the rest of their body. This can cause heart failure, and many times death.
Eggs may make part of a healthy breakfast, but what about the poor hens? As many as six hens can live in a battery cage (one of the types of cages used for the housing of animals, usually stacked in several horizontal layers and most commonly used as housing for laying hens) with a wire floor area of 1.7 square feet. These cages cause for very uncomfortable and overpopulated environment. These surroundings lead to lameness, muscle weakness, and bone brittleness. At the end of their egg-laying cycle, hens are either slaughtered or “force-molted”, in which the hens’ food and water are removed for several days in order to shock their bodies into another cycle. There is no benefit in keeping male chicks, as they cannot lay eggs; as a result, they are killed by suffocation in plastic bags, gassing, crushing, decapitation, or sometimes even being ground up alive.
In order for these farm animals to be preserved, wildlife is killed. Native populations of grizzly bears and wolves have been eliminated. The goal for the federal government hunters now is to kill coyotes, bobcats, bison, mountain lions, and hogs. One hundred thousand of these animals are killed each year, by guns, leg-hold traps, neck nooses, or poison.
The point is that all food animals regardless of whether they produce milk or lay eggs, whether they live in a family farm or factory farm, will be slaughtered. Animals in slaughterhouses hear, smell, and many times see the slaughter of other animals before them. IS this ethical? Are all these horror stories worth a yummy meal?