Dear......................
I am writing to you today to express my opinions about the way we treat our animals. The way we treat the animals that we are going to eat is inhuman and absurd, it is despicable behaviour and should not be allowed. You would have thought that with all the modern technology available to us we could have developed a way to farm meat in a cheap yet humane way. The meat industry is feeding our desire for cheap meat, but by doing this they are ignoring the animals desire for freedom.
The world seems to have become blind to the desperate situation that we are faced with. Lets look at battery chickens for instance, they are kept in tiny cages, often up to five chickens in a cage that measures just 50cm by 50 cm. Obviously a human would not fit in a cage this size, but if we kept a person in a cage with the same amount of space in proportion to their bodies as we do with chickens it wouldn’t be allowed! It would be seen as a form of torture, but it seems perfectly acceptable to subject chickens to this type of treatment.
In this generation of a twisted cultural society of metal monsters and insensitive brainless humans who seem to be unaware of the harm that they are causing the environment there is much suffering. We cause this suffering and we should stop it. Out meat farms have become more like meat factories and our hunger for power has driven us over the edge.
Each year the meat industry abuses and brutally kills nearly nine billion cows, pigs, turkeys and chickens as well as many other innocent animals, all for human consumption. Many people say that animals kill other animals, so why shouldn’t we kill them? ‘It’s just natural’ is what they supply as support for their opinions, but they don’t seem to be able to see that the way we kill our animals is not natural at all. In the wild an animal will kill when it is hungry, few (if any) animals kill for fun, they simply find food when they need it. Back in the times of cavemen we would also do that, hunt wild animals for our consumption when we needed it. But now that the world has progressed we seem to be craving a cruel sort of power, and we satisfy our needs by farming more animals for food than could possibly be consumed. Much of the meat farmed is disposed of, either because it is unfit for human consumption or because there is too much. Our wasteful ways kill animals.
Some may say that these animals have never known any different, but that is like saying that if a child is beaten from the age nought it is alright to continue because it has never known any different. When this is mentioned to them they deny any links. Just because an animal has been subjected to torture form birth, it does not make it ok. Few animals are rescued from the cruelties of farm life, but those who are can often live a full and happy life despite the trauma of previous experiences.
Vegetarians are often accused of eating ‘rabbit food’ but they often live much healthier lives than meat eaters do. Each year, nearly 1,5 million of the consumers that eat meat are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked with the consumption of farmed animals. It has been clinically proven that the intake of too much red meat can be extremely harmful to the body. By having a high intake of meat (especially red meat), you are harming yourself as well as the animals. Meat-eaters often think that vegetarians will suffer from a low protein intake but these people are blind to the fact that meat is not the only available source of protein.
The topic that I feel particularly strongly about is battery chickens. I think that it is absurd that it is acceptable to keep chickens, for eggs and meat, in these appalling conditions. Battery chickens for eggs are kept in such cramped spaces, that one may die but simply be left to rot in with the living animals. The chickens reared for meat are fed so much that their legs sometimes break under their weight. Many humans are over weight but they are not over fed on purpose until their legs break. The fact that we have experienced weight problems in the human world should be a starting block and a motive to create healthier hens. Surely we should use our own problems to help us solve the problems of others, even if those others are animals such as chickens? ‘Learn from your mistakes’ is the phrase that many of us believe in but some how we think that it only applies in some situations. I think that we should definitely learn from the mistakes that we have made that are linked to the meat industry and improve it. Maybe some people honestly don’t see any mistakes and although I can understand their point of view I can not emphasise with it. The way we farm meat is effective, I must admit. The majority of the population has a requirement for cheap meat, and by farming animals in this way we achieve cheap eggs and meat. We use these meat farming techniques to create a profit, and undeniably we do create that profit, but I find it sad that we care more about money than we do about animal welfare.
