Nick Walters
Mr. Logsdon
AP Language & Composition
12/11/2016
Animal Abuse in The Production of Fast Food
In recent years, we have seen the wave of technological advancements enhance our lives and cause a population boom worldwide. However, farm animals are caught in the destructive wake of this wave. In order to supply food for the increased population, we have turned to Factory Farms to supply us with efficiently made food. However, ethics are not considered when feeding our nation. dAnimals such as chickens, pigs, and cows are stuffed in metal crates and fed cheap food and will never see daylight in their short, painful lives. We pump cute little animals full of growth hormones so that it's a “better” piece of meat to eat. But is having your steak slightly bigger worth torturing helpless animals? Absolutely not. This cruelty is a plague to our society and must be ended due to the harm it causes not only animals, but also humans.
Factory farms have one goal- to make as much food possible while using the smallest amount of money. They take all humanity out of the equation and view animals as no more than a paycheck. They consider it a challenge to fit as many animals in one space tight as they can. They keep the animals confined in their pens for their entire lives, never seeing the light of day. When it is time to transfer the chickens to the slaughterhouse,they sneak up on them in the night so they don't disturb them. Then they use baseball bats to break their legs so they can't run away, and then snap their necks and throw them in a truck with hundreds of other dead chickens to go to processing. They put weights on the cows legs so that they don’t run away, and in some extreme cases they have broken the cows legs so it's physically impossible for them to run away. The animals are grown so unnaturally large that it exhausts them to simply stand up. Their legs aren't designed to carry that much weight, and often times the animal's legs break under the stress of carrying all of that excessive mass. These animals are abused by the factory farming system, but there are still farms that treat animals with caution and care.
These animals are put through a living hell where they are confined to tight spaces and given unnatural growth hormones and food that is harmful to the animals. This unnatural diet makes the meat we get from factory farms unhealthy, and possibly contaminated. The added growth hormones, according to “The Effects of Fast Food on the Body”, causes diabetes, heart disease, obesity and depression. The forced growth of the muscle on the animals causes them to become extremely unhealthy. Recently, we’ve seen multiple breakouts of the deadly virus Escherichia Coli, or E coli for short. AboutEcoli.com and Food inc. explain that E Coli is made by feeding cows corn. Cows primary food source is grass, but the factory farmers feed them corn because it's cheaper and more abundant. Cows can't properly digest the corn, which causes the Ecoli virus to sprout and contaminate the meat. The factory farmers pay no attention to the wellbeing of the animals, so they have no clue that they are sick and before we know it, there’s an Ecoli epidemic across the nation. This unhealthy form of farming has wide-spreading consequences that call for a change in the way we make our food.
In our still-advancing society, we value convenience over how healthy our food is, which is the exact opposite of how it should be. There are farmers that still treat animals like family, give them space to graze around, plenty of food and water, and the chance to live an actual life. These farmers sell their freshly made food at farmers markets, but the problem is that it’s inconvenient to travel all the way out to a farmers market for most people, and it's also more expensive to buy from a farmers market. This makes it inaccessible to the majority of the population, forcing them to buy food that was produced in factory farms. Since it's so cheap and convenient, it is an easy choice for many who are busy or on a tight budget. According to the ushfc (U.S Healthful Food Council), an american, on average, eats just under 6 fast food meals per week. This is much higher than it should be, but people are in a hurry between meetings and are forced to stop at the nearest McDonalds or Burger King for a quick meal to-go. If we made these fresh foods more accessible and cost less, they wouldd easily beat out the extremely-processed foods. All of the processing that our food goes through makes it very harmful to our bodies.
Factory farming is harmful to both humans and animals. It is, quite simply, animal abuse. They keep animals stuck in tight quarters that don't permit enough room to move around, or even lie down. They feed animals growth hormones so they can get the most meat out of each individual animal. However, this causes the food to be unhealthy and can even create deadly viruses such as E Coli. People go to fast food restaurants, which purchase these factory farm made meats, due to its cheapness and convenience. If we made Farmers markets easily accessible and relatively cheap, they would overtake the factory farms and create a healthier society. The problem with the classic form of farming is that it's hard to mass produce enough food to feed all the people of the U.S, but something must be done to stop the abuse of animals in factory farms.
Sources:
Food, Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Perf. Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. Movie One, 2008. DVD.
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