Argumentative Essay: The Fight For Animal Rights

Many of us go to the store to buy our meat products such as beef, chicken, pork, and seafood. We browse the isles, examining the clean, packaged item and our only thought is, “which one looks like it has the least fat?” Most of us fail to think about the process it took to put the meat there, and view the meat as an object instead of once a graceful, living thing. These packages of meat that are tossed into your shopping cart are most likely from a factory farm. According to the Huffington Post factory farms produce 99.9% of chickens used for food, 97% of hens used for egg production, 95% of pigs used for food, and 78% of cows used for food. Although these industrial farms take precaution and follow the laws set forth by the government
He believes humans are naturally paramount to all other species, and that both animals and humans equally benefit from this interaction. He states that suffering of the animal is just part of the process. Unlike Budiansky, animal rights activist Nathan Rankle, the founder of Mercy for Animals, a non-profit organization, argues that there is an unnecessary amount of excess suffering and torturing of animals before and during the slaughter in factory farms that needs to be
The federal laws and regulations in place to ensure “humane” slaughter are seriously out of date. The Humane Slaughter Act enacted in 1958, only states that livestock be slaughtered “humanely” without specific instruction. The U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) excludes poultry and fish from this act. This means billions of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and fish do not need to be “rendered insensible to pain before being hoisted, shackled, and cut” (Cassuto 64). The Animal Welfare act enacted in 1966 is the major federal statute that protects the well being of animals, however, it specifically doesn’t include farm animals. Not only do the laws in place not ensure humane methods of slaughter, they’re extremely unenforced by the government. Reprimanding someone who breaks the law is extremely challenging, first the state must prove intent, which is hard considering the thousands of animals under industrial food processor care. They can easily claim that they had no idea about each animal’s condition, which completes their defense. Since it’s so hard to convict a major food corporation as guilty, considering all they need to state is how its impossible to ensure the well being of each and every animal, law enforcement is reluctant to enforce the minimal amount of laws provided because it’s a waste of time (Welty