Ethical Dilemmas Of Factory Farming

Imagine walking through a building that is crammed from wall to wall with thousands of chickens, making so much noise because of how little room they have to move around. “Corpses that have been in the cages for so long that their bodies have become mummified” (Humane Society of the United States). Walking on a floor that is caked with so many flies. Seeing the unsanitary location where the food you serve your family is coming from. You have just walked through a factory farm.

Hamburgers are some of the most, if not the most, American food that a person could get their taste buds on. Although hamburgers remain popular, the meat in such foods have their share of controversies since the labels, “organic” and “conventional,” were placed upon them. The harsh reality is that conventional farming methods of meat is gruesome and somewhat macabre; the animals are packed into a high density farms where they are constantly being pressured into confined spaces that are grossly unsanitary. For this reason, organic farming is becoming popular with their humane practices of raising farm animals. In effect, this raises the question: is the abuse in the industrialized, now called conventional, meat industry worth the final product?

The fast food industry abuses the fact of animals not having the same right as humans. Factory farming mistreat many animals such as calves by taking them away from their mothers and leaving them all alone. According to “9 Fact About Factory Farming That Will Break Your Heart” from Huffpost states, “ The calves are also kept in near or total darkness and suffered from forced anemia, for no reason other than to keep their flesh pale and attractive.” This shows that workers didn’t care about calves by leaving them suffering in darkness and not being feed well which forced them to have anemia. If workers at factoring farming cared about these animals they wouldn’t treat them like this.

“To satisfy the public's ever-growing appetite for meat, slaughterhouses in the United States killed ten billion animals last year. That's 27,397,260 animals every day, 1,141,553 every hour, 19,026 every minute” (Jones). Many animals are being placed in slaughter houses each year to meet this high demand. Farm animal welfare refers to the state, living condition, and treatment, animals are but under in farms. Cruel animal welfare has spread throughout the world killing millions of animals in inhumane ways.

In Michael Pollan’s book, An Omnivore’s Dilemma, we are focused on many different views of eating meat and other foods that are products of animals. The majority of those who chose to consume

Michael Pollan’s alternative to Factory farming has given a huge insight into a better ethics on food. In “The Animals: Practicing Complexity” Michael Pollan writes about a polyface farm and how it works. The goal of a polyface farm is to emotionally, economically, and environmentally enhance agriculture. Everything on a polyface farm has the potential to be helpful to something else on the farm. Pollan states “The chicken feed not only feeds the broilers but, transformed into chicken crap, feeds the grass that feeds the cows that, as I was about to see, feeds the pigs and the laying hens” (Pollan 345).

In the article, “Against Meat,” author Jonathan Safran Foer discusses the moral level of eating meat, which is included in many diets in most people in America. He notes that as a child he loved the food that was prepared by his grandmother, who he considered as the best chef in the family. Furthermore, he also talks about the occasions like family gathering, all that he use to eat is meat (burger). Despite eating of meat mostly during family occasions, Foer decided to stop eating meat but rather eat more vegetables rather than eating all these meat foods. In addition, Foer himself writes “According to the U.S.D.A data by the advocacy group Farm Forward, factory farms now produce more that 99 percent of animals”.

Eating meat is not terrible, as long as the animal was free range. Eating farmed meat can actually lead to health problems because the animals are plump filled with hormones. Chickens are as big as cattle. Unfortunately, I am not really

“The more exposure people have to the realities of factory farming, the more we will see people rejecting it. It's already happening”(Jonathan Safran Foer). Factory farming has been going on since the 1900’s. Factory Farming is the production of livestock in large quantities for uses such as food supplies. Factory Farming is damaging to the animals, our bodies, and the environment.

To keep up with the demand, these meat companies found ways to increase their production of meat. Large meat companies began injecting chickens with growth hormones and steroids, which caused the chickens to grow twice as big in half the amount of time. Not only are the chickens genetically modified, but they are also raised in factories with thousands of other chickens. These huge companies sacrificed the quality of their produce for quantity. The documentary filmmakers interviewed several farmers who raise chickens for Tyson Food.

In turn that means that farmers producing our eggs don’t have the chickens to produce the eggs. And in result jacking up the prices of a dozen eggs. As a cashier at a grocery store, I know firsthand the anger this causes consumers. Produce prices are also at a new high as we look outside of the United States to get our fresh produce. Finally, our nation is faced with a big problem: Inadequate

Did you know that many cows in factory farms die before their 5th birthday? (Leader, Jessica. "9 Facts About Factory Farming That Will Break Your Heart (GRAPHIC PHOTOS)." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 17 Mar. 2014. Web. 16 Mar. 2017.) Factory Farms are awful for people and the animals because the animals suffer, they’re treated with antibiotics, and factory farming affects the environment. Animals suffer because of the living conditions they are in. The animal is treated with antibiotics, which is not good for them. The environment is being polluted because of all the manure. First, the idea of what factory farming is going to be addressed.

Although people irrefutably need sustenance to survive, humans have developed an unbalanced reliance on creatures like cows and chickens as their main food source. “In the United States, about 35 million cows, 115 million pigs, and 9 trillion birds are killed for food each year” (Vegetarianism). This constant demand for meat illustrates the endless cycle of breeding animals and then slaughtering them. However, many first-world countries hold a surplus of provisions that supplies more than enough to feed their people, making the use of livestock pointless.

Documentary Reflection #1 – Food, Inc. Food, Inc. is an incredible account of what really occurs in our food system in the United States. This documentary takes a closer look at the farming industry and unveils a very dark side. It is amazing to think that chickens have been re-engineered to produce more white meat and grow to their full size in 49 days compared to the usual three months. These chickens can barely stand since they cannot hold their own weight and are pumped with antibiotics due to their horrendous living conditions. It just doesn’t seem right.

At one point in your life, have you ever thought to yourself how was the meat on your plate produced, and why is it so cheap? Billions of farm animals are consumed every year in the U.S. at cheap costs and endure in conditions that buyers wouldn’t acknowledge. A large portion of our meats originate from meat industries that produce, abuse, and process meat for the public from farms that abuse animals unless the animal was raised organically. The meats that are produced are a necessity for a us omnivores because we eat meat on a daily basis as a source for protein and fat, unless you are vegetarian, or vegan. Now since it’s a necessity for us living beings, is cruelty in animal agriculture worth the outcome for better for our economy?