Today in America the average person consumes anywhere from two hundred and sixty pounds to three hundred pounds of meat a year, according to a Cha-Cha search engine. That is despicable and extremely hard to fathom! This is exponentially more than any other country on earth! That is despicable and extremely hard to fathom! Why, what makes meat so accesable here? What drives us to consume fatty meats more than any other food group? The answer lies in the cheap manufacturing skills of many slaughterhouses.

In America over 99% of slaughterhouses are upheld in a traditional regard, leaving only 1% to organic and free-range slaughterhouses. A traditional upholding usually means that things are kept in a manner where animals aren’t being given the rights they deserve. Rights like: freedom to clean quarters, rights to death with anesthesia and the rights to be steroid free. Many farmers do not respect these rights and are rarely penalized for the lack of adhering to them. Why, you may ask? Because it is cheaper for these farmers to keep their livestock in unkempt quarters, cheaper to kill them ruthlessly (rather than humanly), and more cost efficient for them to fatten them up with steroids in a short period of time.

Many other things go on behind the scenes, as well. Such as the time when a routine health inspector went in to a local Dallas plant for a checkup and found live cattle suspended from slaughtering machines. Along with this he found blood and animal guts strewn about the working floor. These areas are supposed to be kept clean of blood and animal organs to ensure quality to the meat. But this one inspector’s discovery should come as hardly a surprise. Many of these American slaughterhouses think they are exempt from rules. They simply think they don’t have to adhere to proper protocol, because their shunning of the rules has gone unnoticed for an extended period of time.

Imagine, you are a young calf, just born, ready to live the normal life every cow should be allowed to have, when suddenly it is cut short, by a man with a prod, a prod he will proceed to stick in to you to kill you, with no anesthetic. This is the life many animals lead today. A horrid life, a life where they spend thirteen months in a cage with other animals, all the while being injected with steroids, having bones broken due to constant abuse, and being forced to eat fattening corn based products.

People who disagree with my point of view may say, “Animals have no feelings, there for have no rights!”. I disagree; I believe animals have the ability to understand their surroundings, they know when they are being deprived of the usual commodities that every animal should expect. They are far more intelligent than we give them credit for, and I think we are foolish when we say things like “animals have no feelings”, and then deriving from that, that they have no rights.

So why do we eat so much meat as Americans? Because it is cheap, accesable and something that we seem to over look when we try to improve our world. We continually neglect the subject of Animal Rights and barley gives more than a moments thought. Are we uncomfortable with the fact that we have eaten things with feelings, faces and beating hearts? Yes, so we will continue to ignore it until it is too much for us to bear. When we finally realize eating animals that have been treated this way is not only hurting them but is hurting us as well. Eating two hundred and sixty to three hundred pounds of meat a year is an unimaginable amount of fat and unhealthy acids. Eating this way has resulted in heart disease, strokes and untimely deaths. Yet, we press forward with no seeable end in the near future.

As a concluding point, I urge those who still are not convinced (of the horrible cruelty that occurs every day in meat plants), to switch to free-range meats. Free-range meats are much better for you because the animal was fed well, treated well, killed with anesthesia and not injected with steroids. In all honesty what is stopping you? Why don’t all meat eaters eat animals that have been treated right? Cost may be one factor, but if you think about it you are benefiting your health; if you benefit your health you don’t have to go to as many doctor visits. Doesn’t that seem worth it? Throw out all your preconceived notions of Animal Rights activism, and think, what is really holding you back? Any respectable human would rather have an animal be treated well than to be treated poorly. What allows there to be Animal Right laws in other conditions but not in the situations where the animals were bread to be killed? This is simply food for thought; I hope I have changed at least a portion of your opinions on Animal Rights.