Today, in America, approximately 2,739,726 animals will be slaughtered to make someone’s dinner. This comes to about ten billion animals per year. Underneath all the corporate ideas that meat and dairy are some of the most important things that people can consume, is the fact that dinner comes from a factory farm—a calorie factory. That dinner is in no way the healthiest thing for people to eat, and it’s certainly not Earth friendly. Factory farms have gradually put local (more humane) slaughterhouses out of business, because they are unable to keep up with the rising number of meat products that factory farms can produce. What most people have grown up believing is not all true. It is time to break free from the social norm of eating animals and animal products, and realize the truth behind the face on the plate: this diet is not humane, healthy, or good for our planet. Veganism is an ethical alternative.
Ethics is one reason people should go vegan. Slaughterhouses maintain that they use humane killing methods, but this is a missed attempt. Cows are one example of the unethical treatment of animals. Calves raised for beef will be branded, dehorned, and castrated without anesthesia. They will live in a feed lot for about six months, and fed unnatural feed which agitates the pH of their digestive system. So, corn then loaded with antibiotics to combat that bacteria. Before the Humane Slaughter Act of 1978 was set in place, steers simply had their throats slit. The author of Generation V, Claire Askew, illustrates that they are now killed with a captive bolt pistol, which shoots and retracts a steel rod between the cow’s eyes, with the goal of inducing a coma so that the steer is unconscious while butchered. However, captive bolt pistols rarely ever do just that, and with the speed of the killing line, it is impossible to make sure that each steer is dead. Often the cow will be fully awake, and in pain. Most of the time live cattle make it all the way to the disemboweling machine. Not only is this inhumane, it is dangerous for the workers to have to do their jobs while live, kicking, and horrified animals move down the killing lines. Slowing the line to give the workers proper time to do their jobs and operate machinery would result in the factory producing fewer products, and making less money. Everything that sounds cruel and unethical is all done so that these brutal farms can make more money.
