Research Paper
Animals Deserve To Have Rights

As you are sitting in a fast food restaurant eating a hamburger does it ever occur to you where the burger came from? Do you imagine a healthy cow grazing in a beautiful green pasture? Well that is a thing of the past. In today’s world the majority of animals that are used for food comes from animals that are forced to live in confined spaces without seeing the light of day their entire lives. The place these grotesquely tortured animals come from is what is called ”Factory Farms”. Animals are classified as just a piece of property which in many cases results in inhumane treatment, and in turn can affect the environment and the quality of the meat that we consume: Penalties should be more severe to ensure humane treatment and farmers need to be better educated on how the confinement and treatment of farm animals impacts the environment and the quality of meat. Animals are considered as just a piece of property, which in many cases results in inhumane treatment. In the past animals on the farm were treated as a part of the family due to the fact that they were the means for the family as a source of food or in making money for the home. Since then the times have changed and a new form of farming has taken over in the form of factory farms, which are used to produce as much food from farm animals as possible, while doing so with very little cost to the farmer. In doing this it has caused a problem in the way these animals are taken care of due to the large amounts of animals on the farm with limited space available. “On today’s factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy, windowless sheds and confined wire cages, gestation cages, barren dirt lots, and other cruel confinement systems”. (Chickens Used for food 2010) At these farms, cows are milked three times a day for about 10 months. Once the cow is unable to produce any more milk it is then fed corn and protein supplements in order to plump up the animal in as little as 7 months. At the end of this time period it is then sent to the slaughterhouse. They are put into a large room to wait to be slaughtered. Once in the slaughtering area the cow is tied up by its back legs and stunned by a prod that is supposed to render then unconscious. A majority of the time the stunning is not effective and the cows are cut open while they are still alive. Once they have been processed through the massive assembly line, they are packaged up and shipped off to the grocery stores. (Factory Farming-Beef 2011) In the mass production of food from these factory farms animals are treated inhumanely to the point that it has been compared to a concentration camp that was around during the holocaust. “Factory farms are also known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFO’s” (Inhumane Treatment of Farm Animals 3) Beef cattle production in the United States is generally organized into three different stages. The “cow-calf” stage is where the farmer manages the cow during breeding, gestation and calving. This is done to the point that calves are weaned at the age of approximately 6-9 months and average a weight of 400-700 pounds. The second stage is called the “stocker” phase where the calves are managed for an additional 3-7 months. During this time the calves will gain an additional 200-400 pounds. The last stage is called the “feedlot” stage. In this stage the calves are kept in unusually high numbers and are fed a combination of forage and grain to achieve a final weight before slaughter of 1,000-1,500 pounds. This process puts undue stress on the cow as weight gain is so fast and their bodies are unable to handle the growth in such a short period of time. At this point the cows are then sold to a feedlot buyer who want the calves to be dehorned and castrated. This process is usually done approximately 30 days before being sold to the feedlot. Pain relief is rarely used due to the cost, and research