Factory Farming Debates

Have you ever thought about where your meat comes from or what kind of life the animal has lived? Almost all the meat stocked in grocery stores and food facilities come from factory farms which are large scale industrial operations that are the home to thousands of animals such as chickens, cows, pigs and turkeys. Such animals are raised strictly for food consumption and never see the light of day, according to (ASPCA 2015). Also, according to dosomething.org (2015) there are approximately 70 billion farm animals raised for food consumption every year across the world. These types of farms dominate the U.S food production along with some other countries in the world. Factory farms employ abusive practices that increase profits at the expense
of harming the environment, communities, animal welfare, and the population’s health in order to generate profit. The animals in factory farms are not seen as individual sentient beings with needs, but as mere products such as leather, meat, milk and eggs. Factory farming is strictly a business, and the people who organize it only have an interest in maximizing product and profit. According to PETA (2015) factory farms pack animals into spaces so tight they can barely move, have no access to the outdoors, and are forced to spend their life in cages on factory floors with no light or room to engage in natural animal behaviors. Such an environment causes the animals to live what little of a life they have with severe mental and physical distress. Animals are abused daily and not enough is being done to spread awareness or put an end to it. Factory animals are being treated as though they are a commodity and not a conscious being. According to lcanimal.org, they are bred confined, drugged, abused, and fed unnatural food all for the goal of laying more eggs, producing more offspring, and dying with more meat on their bones so the factory farmers can indulge in a higher income. This paper will present the alternative position on the topic of whether animals should be kept in factory farms for human consumption or not in the perspective of animal welfare and animal right components and food security proponents. This paper will be written on the perspective of animal welfare proponents, which is speaking on behalf of the people who ensure that all animals used by humans have their basic needs fulfilled in terms of shelter, food, health and that they experience no unnecessary suffering in providing for human needs.
Also, this paper will be written on the perspective of animal rights proponents which is speaking on the behalf of all non-human animals which are entitled to the possession of their own lives and their own basic interests such as the needs to avoid suffering. Animal rights proponents also state that animals shouldn't be used as property, food, clothing, research objects, entertainment, or beasts of burden. (Gary Francione, 1995, page 17). The general proponents of this perspective feel that it is morally wrong to have animals treated by humans in a way that would entail causing suffering of any kind. According to a Rolling Stone Article by Nita Rao (December 10, 2013), animals are abused daily in factory farms for the ease of production. There has also been cases of mentally disturbed workers who enjoy the mistreatment of animals. Factory farms are an example of what goes against the view of an animal rights activist or an animal welfare activist. Cows and pigs aren’t born to live indoors their whole lives or even part of their life. They get sick easily and are too depressed, but billions of them are forced to live in confined spaces in dark factories during their abnormally accelerated life just so a person can enjoy a burger for their next meal. Instead of standing up for animal rights, people selfishly consume the meat made by these horrid slaughter farms without thinking twice about it. The saying “ignorance is bliss” definitely applies to this subject. Everyone has the choice to treat the world’s animals humanely and to heal our bodies from all the chemicals and artificial injections, or to allow this epidemic to continue and watch it destroy our
planet day by day while intoxicating our bodies. Every animal deserves the right not to suffer and an action must be taken to further prevent the suffering of animals. Animals play one of the most important roles in agriculture. They provide the population with food and fiber, cycle nutrients, and add fertility to the soil, but the farming of animals is becoming further and further from its natural existence on land. A farm should be a place where an animal can act in its natural state of existence while living a full and healthy natural life with plenty of free ranged land and good treatment. Instead, factories are being used in place of the ideal farms, which are causing severe implications for animal welfare. Every animal’s life span is shortened and traumatic. Human beings are highly intelligent self-conscious beings that should be taking care of their planet along with its beings whether they are self-conscious or not. Animal rights are crucial in the sense that every non-human being should be treated without suffering within the life they live. Current factory farming ideals are the epitome of the disintegration regarding animal rights. These rights include that the moral values and fundamental protections are on the basis of any particular species. Modern day factory farm animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wired cages, metal crates and use several torturous devices, which goes against all moral ethics. Farmed animals will never get to see or raise their own families, play, build nests, do anything naturally innate or important to them. They will never get to enjoy the lives they were born to live. The industry also strives to maximize output while decreasing the costs at any animal’s expense. Factory farms have discovered that the more animals they can squeeze into one place, the more money they will make even though numerous amounts of animals die from diseases or infections due to overcrowding. Humans should not have a say in the fate of another living being’s life. We should be doing everything that we can to make this world a better place and not a place to commit horrible acts and create a hell for non-morally conscious beings. The amount of the Earth’s total land mass used for animal grazing is 26%, but the number of acres devoted to U.S animal production is 528 million. These statistics just prove what this world is prioritizing today. Morals have gone out the window for people who are choosing profit over individual animals rights and needs. It’s sickening to know what some people will voluntarily do to animals, and these people need to be stopped immediately. There is a controversy over the fact that consuming meat is so common and has been since the beginning of evolution, but there is a certain extent as to how many animals should be used for consumption and how. Many people don’t even consider the facts on how their meat was raised and at what age it is killed when they consume it. For example, baby cows are slaughtered daily, they barely get to live a life, and the life they did live was torturous, just so people can enjoy a more tender meat labeled ‘veal’. This in itself is so wrong, and the fact that it is legal and considered normal is morally corrupt. If people were to compare animals to humans they would think it is wrong to kill baby animals for the enjoyment of a more tender meat. According to the New York Times, veal sales dropped when photos were released showing calves tied to crates so small they could barely move. The impact of society’s reaction to these photos was so intense that yearly veal consumption plummeted from four pounds to half a pound. The American veal association has banned the use of crates in several states and is planning on eliminating the use of crates in the nation by 2017. This progress is amazing, but there are other things people need to consider and begin taking action on. Factory farms need to be banned altogether and there should be strict guidelines on how to raise farm animals with associations to make sure that the animals are being treated well and fed natural food with no hormones or chemicals. This would make the world a better place one issue at a time. My second perspective will be the perspective of food security proponents, which is speaking on the behalf of the U.S. population. Factory farms have increased levels of salmonella and E. Coli, which are transmitted to the population consuming meat, dairy and eggs, according to factory farm map (2012). According to Stephanie Strom (September 15, 2014), to prevent diseases, farms are injecting antibiotics in large doses to the farm animals, which is creating drug-resistant strains of bacteria in our bodies. The saying “you are what you eat” definitely applies when talking about farm animal production. What animals are being fed in factories directly correlates with what is being put into people’s bodies when they consume dairy or meat. Farmers are putting doses of hormones to increase the animal’s growth and antibiotics to prevent outbreaks of disease in the overcrowded, filthy factory conditions. In the U.S, 70% of antibiotics are used on farm animals in factories, but European countries have banned the use of antibiotics on livestock, which has shown a decrease in resistance to antibiotics in humans acc