How We Mistreat the Animals We Eat
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Haas, Samantha J.
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How We Mistreat the Animals We Eat (2001 Third Year Paper)Abstract
There has been an enormous transition in the United States from a nation comprised of small-scale, local family farms to one dominated by large-scale, corporate operations, appropriately termed “factory farms.†The farming industry inflicts a virtual holocaust on animals raised for food and food production, forcing them to endure needless suffering and pain. Nothing indicates that such cruelties will subside in the future. As such, we must face the moral dilemma of constantly striving to create an ideal society amidst such cruelties. With other countries finally addressing this irony and making significant positive changes, the United States lags behind. Our legal system has failed to extend the shelter of compassion and pity to those animals we eventually eat. Do they not deserve the same respect as other animals, or possibly even more since we eventually deprive them of the ultimate freedom, their lives? Does our moral obligation not extend to them? Must they suffer so much? With the main thrust of the Food and Drug Administration, and particularly, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, being the protection of people not the welfare of animals, and with the FDA’s lack of financial resources, little hope exists for change. Once we recognize that “[l]aws, and enforcement or observance of laws for the protection of [farm animals] from cruelty are…among the best evidences of the justice and benevolence of men,†only then will we be able to come close to obtaining an ideal society.Terms of Use
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