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Actually, of all rapacious animals, man is the most universal destroyer. The destruction of quadrupeds, birds and insects is, in general, limited to particular kinds: but the rapacity of man has hardly any limitation. His empire over the other animals which inhabit this globe is almost universal.^[1]

The American College of Surgeons supports the responsible use and human care and treatment of laboratory animals in research, education, teaching, and product safety testing in accordance with applicable local, state, and federal animal welfare laws. Further, the membership believes that only as many animals as necessary should be used; that any pain or distress animals may experience should be minimized or alleviated.

Worldwide, over 200 million living animals a year are used for research in scientist experiments.^[2] 60 billion animals are processed for human consumption each year, not counting fish.^[3] And about 35,000 bulls are killed in bullfights in Spain each year.^[4] “In a lifetime, the average person in the USA will eat 23 pigs,

3 lambs, 11 cattle, 45 turkeys, and 1,097 chickens.�^[5] Just one person changing to a vegetarian diet would save more than 100 innocent beings per year. That is why Dennis J. Kucinich said “Every one of us knows a story of animal cruelty, every one of us knows how in one way or another official policies have sanctioned cruelty to animals.�^[6]

Anywhere we go, creatures destined for the dinner plate endure cruel living conditions. We are eating them anyway, goes the strange logic. In the United States, the convention is to estimate the number of animals used for such purposes at about 70 to 90 million per year. Some estimates, however, are as low as 15 million per year. Yet there are a few persons who claim that the best estimate is 120 million per year.^[7] The United States is not a good place to be if you’re a farmed animal. Though you are a living, feeling, sentient being, there is little in the nation’s laws to protect you abuse. First, the federal level Animal Welfare Act has no meaning for you because the word “animal,� as legally defined, does not apply to “farm animals used for food, fiber, or production purposes.� Consequently, even though the title of this statute implies to the public that the government looks after the welfare of animals destined for the dinner plate, it does not. And by leaving farmed animals unprotected against the onslaught of industrial farm production, the law actually helps to open the floodgates to even more animal cruelty to a scale, in fact, never before seen. Other federal level anti-cruelty laws that cover specific conditions during transport, at stockyards, and during the slaughter process similarly lack teeth in their wording and are inadequately enforced.^[8]

More than twenty-seven billion animals are killed for food every year in the U.S. alone. Animals in factory farms have no legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on dogs or cats, including neglect, mutilations, genetic manipulation, drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and gruesome and violent slaughter. If animals count in their own right, our use of animals for food becomes questionable especially when animal flesh is a luxury rather than a necessity.^[9]

The slaughterhouse is the final stop for animals raised for their flesh. These ghastly places, while little known to most meat-eaters, process enormous numbers of animals each years. A surprising quantity of meat is consumed by the meat-eater.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

Richard D. Ryder, Animal revolution: changing attitudes towards specialism, New York: Berg, 2000:92.

[2]:

Barbara James, Op. Cit. 22.

[3]:

M. J. Urch. ‘Fish and Fish Products�. In. Food Industries Manual, eds. M. D. Ranken, R. C. Kill and C. Baker, UK: Blackie Academic & Professional, 1997: 61.

[4]:

Barbara James, Op. Cit. 34.

[5]:

Ibid. 13.

[6]:

Pamela Rice, One Hundred and One Reasons Why I’m a Vegetarian, New York: Lantern Books, 2005: 9.

[7]:

Peter Singer and Tom Regan, Animal Rights and Human Obligations, New Jersey: Prentice-hall, Eaglewood Cliffs, 1976: 199.

[8]:

Pamela Rice, Op. Cit. 10.

[9]:

Peter Singer, Op. Cit. 62.