Essay #1..

Animal Treatment

I feel bad to know that animals go through a great deal of pain just so people can eat, be warm, and- feel pretty. I think it is very wrong, yet I still condone in to this behavior. I also think by me using animals for my personal gain is very selfish because I know they go through pain and they have feelings just like me.

Every day we are intimately connected with animals. We eat animals for food, wear animal skins for clothes, own animals as pets, use animals for recreation, and experiment on animals to test drugs and consumer products. We are aware of this, yet we typically give little thought to the staggering number of animals that we use in these ways, and what the animals themselves might be experiencing as we use them for our purposes. While no non-human animal on this planet has the sophisticated rational abilities that we do, many, nevertheless, have mental capacities that enable them to experience pain, suffering, and anxiety from our treatment of them. 

In the U.S., over 10 billion animals are raised and killed each year for food—about 9 billion chickens, 250 million turkeys, 100 million pigs, 35 million cows. The vast majority of these are not raised on small family farms but, rather, in large agricultural facilities called factory farms, also known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). The idea of factory farming originated in the 1920s with the discovery of vitamins A and D. When mixed with feed, farm animals were capable of growing without sunlight or exercise, which enabled them to be raised more efficiently in barns throughout the year. With population growth, and increases in meat eating, by the 1960s factory farming became widespread and today it dominates the meat production industry. The driving force behind factory farming is economics: it is cheaper to raise animals in a confined area using assembly-line methods than it is to manage them in larger and open areas. The meat industry is highly competitive, and to stay in business farmers need to adopt the most cost-effective methods of raising animals.

I do believe that people in the U.S. are generally concerned about animal protection, but are not ready to make big sacrifices on behalf of animals when it conflicts with human interests, like me. I feel as though animals deserve the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation. They deserve some protection from harm and exploitation, but it is still appropriate to use them for the benefit of humans.