Be a Vegetarian

Ninety seven percent of the worlds population, today, are meat eaters of “factory farmed animals”and I must confess, I am one of them. However, after watching videos and reading material to support my narration, I have begun to wonder if society really takes the time to understand how the meat eaten is prepared? Have we become so self absorbed that we no longer comprehend the plight these poor animals are put through, before becoming dinner?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Most people do not look beyond buying and consuming meat as part of their daily diets. Scientifically, being omnivorous is good for us. It provides protein and other nutritional supplements our body needs. However, a question arises; is it not possible to receive the same nutrition from vegetables and other organic food? Simply put, the answer is yes. Then why is it that animals must be butchered? Why is there no compassion for them before they are killed and placed on our dining tables?

Although, humans have been omnivorous since the era of “cavemen”, it can largely be stated that humans in the 21st century are educated and live a much more civic lifestyle; bringing us back to the treatment of animals. Now a days, the treatment of an animal becoming dinner is very poor. It is getting extremely difficult to maintain proper food quality. The answer lies in the consumer. A family with a low “socioeconomic status” in society will usually be the one to follow the “Standard American Diet”; a diet rich in dairy products, meat and eggs. This family will shop at a large store, such as Costco and eat at a fast food joint, such as McDonald's, to lower the cost of food and save time. These families are more common than not, concerned just with the bottom line, not with the treatment of animals. (Singer 16)

Farming factories, the place where meat, such as cows and chicken, are raised, torture the animals that they end up becoming sick and depressed causing diseases like “Cytokine – induced sickness behavior.” The best example comes from veals. After being born, the young calves are taken away from their mothers and fed “milk replacers, including cattle blood.” The veals are then kept in small cages and underfed so that their meat becomes lean and pale. These unhealthy conditions make the veals sick making them “susceptible to a long list of diseases including chronic pneumonia and diarrhea.” (PETA par 2)

Consuming meat that have been affected by such diseases can be very harmful on humans. A perfect example, mad cow disease,a great epidemic, also hormone treated beef and was banned because European children were being infected in different ways. There are other things that cause diseases including “chemical carcinogens, added to the meat, or produced by heating, cancer viruses found in tumors in animals, transmittable to humans, [and] lessened host resistance to invasive disease, lack of fiber in meat.”