Rights are a moral, ethical, or legal principle considered as an underlying cause of truth, justice, morality, or ethics as the dictionary of reference explains. When people think of the word rights does the meaning of the word applies to all type of beings? Most of the times not, people tend to think of the human specie as more valuable and superior than the animal specie which lead to the idea that in humans perspective animals are in a lower position than human beings and therefore have limited rights.
The average Americans eats more than 200 pounds of red meat, poultry, and fish per year. That’s an increase of 23 pounds over 1970 which was a year where these food were being excessively consumed.
This issue wouldn’t cross most peoples mind and we all should do something about it after all we are the ones who beneficiate the most from animals and we should educate everybody from kids to the elderly about how animals are being abuse in slaughters houses. Animals should have rights in fact they do but they are not being followed is it really so hard to give them a painless death to treat them we a little bit of respect I mean we all live in the same world we need them in order to survive.
Cruelty is experience everyday in a million different slaughterhouses by people who consider animals as simple products with no capacity to feel pain, Animals in slaughterhouses can smell, hear, and often see the slaughter of those before them. As the animals struggle, the human workers, who are pressured to keep the lines moving quickly, often react with impatience towards the animals.
According to the book The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer, a typical chicken shed and you will experience a burning feeling in your eyes and your lungs, that’s the ammonia that comes from the birds droppings, which are allowed to piled up on the floor without being cleaned out for an entire year and sometimes for several years.
High amounts of ammonia have several effects on chickens, they develop heart disease, sores on their feet, breast blisters and also cause many of them to go blind.
One study found that 90 percent of broilers had detectable leg problems, while 26 percent suffered chronic pain as a result of bone disease. The broilers don’t move not because they are overstock but because it hurt it’s joints. Te worse part is that this cause them paralysis and they lose control over their legs. Paralyze birds cannot get food or water and because many growers don’t have the time or just don’t want to check on each bird, these die of thirst or starvation.
Pigs also suffer different mutilations by workers who’s job is cutting off their tails, clipping their needle teeth and castrating them without an anesthetic, all of this pain done to the poor pigs as Wayne Bradley, an Iowa pig producer excused with ignorant quotes like the “tails are cut off so that they won’t bite each other’s” or “it would be an expense that is obviously going to cost money” he says there is not a dollar per pig to throw away. This kind of procedure is inhuman, unethical and is frustrating. This is not the procedure most people think of when eating chicken at KFC, Mc Donald’s, restaurants or their own homes and this is because people is not informed of what’s going on in slaughterhouses
Eric Schlosser describes one of the nations largest slaughterhouses kill floor where
dozens of cattle, stripped of their skins, dangle of chains from their hind legs.
Most of the workers found in a slaughterhouse are illegal immigrants. They earn lower wages than regular production employees. They work for several hours, in really dangerous conditions, putting their selves on risk, in order to make a salary that would provide their families in other countries. Workers are giving an specified procedure to follow with each animal, this one is supposed to be done is seconds, non stopping and with all the pressure they have on them and after working for so many hours workers don’t have the chance to treat animals carefully, but instead cruel and fast.
With the limited amount of time they dispose the only thing they are able to do is grab them quickly by a leg and put them thru each stage. Since they have seconds for each animal there is no time to think about the fact that animals can feel pain.
As a matter of fact the necessity of these people to get money don’t let them feel compassion for animals. Sometimes after working for a long period of time people lose conscious of the animals screaming and struggling when passing thru the steps.
Animal liberation by Peter Singer provides the definition of the word “speciesism” a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interest of members of one’s own species and against those members of other species. Difficult to believe but the word applies to many meat factory owners when defending themselves against health inspectors questions about the bad procedures they use when killing animals.
These ones say that animals don’t have the ability to feel pain and therefore it should not matter the way they are being treated. Putting animals as just simple products that need to be killed in order for people to consume them and for the factory owners to get a profit.
Ethics, the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles. Moral principles may be viewed either as the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for themselves or as the body of obligations and duties that a particular society requires of its members. In other words ethics are a type of unwritten rules that people follow every time they perform an action having in mind not to hurt our surroundings mentally or physically. When actions like hurting and animal just for fun occur the meaning of the word human ethics disappeared. The fact that we are humans, and have so many capacities (thinking logically), don’t give us the right to treat animals with such a cruelty.
Instead we should treat animals more kindly, because we are very similar in many ways. We both breath, communicate with our species, eat, and we both have the ability to feel pain. Even though some people consumed them there is not real need for people to cause animals a painful, and irritating death.
Mammals killed for foods in the U.S. unlike chickens, ducks, and turkeys are required by law to be stunned before being killed. This is a step that may help the animals to be conscious where getting killed and that way not feel that much pain. Somehow effective when done the right way but it has been proven that not a hundred percent of slaughterhouses are able to stun all the animals on the first attempt.
With the hundreds of animals killed every hour inspectors are rarely present, and when they do come, the company has already been advise so that they could act in a different while they check everything, even when inspectors find violation in the factories they take actions even though they should.
California passed a law – the "downed animal" law – prohibiting the slaughter of non-ambulatory animals and requiring slaughterhouses holding such animals to euthanize them immediately. This law was passed after many people watch a video where
non-ambulatory cows at a California slaughterhouse were kicked, electrocuted, dragged with chains, and rammed with forklifts. The first reaction people were upset to
the fact that cows were going trough an inhuman unnecessary treatment. They were also worried that the meet they consume could come from cows who were ill before dying.
To conclude it is crucial that the government step in the process of slaughtering, while animals must die for meat they need not necessarily suffer. The little weak laws that protect some animals when being slaughter are not being enforce and there for factories do not follow them. Also inspectors should be more careful when visiting a factory, they should make sure everything is done according to safety regulations. In order for the animals to have a painless and more ethical death.
Work Cited
Singer, Peter, and Jim Mason. The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. [Emmaus, Pa.]: Rodale, 2006. Print.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: the Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.
Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: Avon, 1977. Print.
Colb, Sherry F. "Federal Appeals Court Rejects Preemption Claim Against California "Downed Animal" Law: A Victory for Animal Rights?" FindLaw's Writ | Legal Commentary. 14 Apr. 2010. Web. 07 June 2010.
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