The True Price of Animal Cruelty
Tyson, one of the nation’s biggest meat industries, slaughters a combined total of about
41 million cows, chickens, and pigs a week. At that rate, in only eight weeks, Tyson alone would kill off more animals than the entire U.S. population. Animal abuse is normally frowned upon in society. When someone imagines a puppy being beaten by its owner and crying in pain, one’s eyes would usually begin to swell up in tears. However, why isn’t the same sympathy expressed when it comes to farm animals such as chickens, cows, and pigs? Millions of Americans consume these animals daily, yet many do not recognize that the animals they are eating were severely abused and cruelly slaughtered before they ended up on their plates. This abuse is not only harmful to the helpless animals themselves, but to the millions of Americans who ingest meat daily. The consumption of this tainted meat is harmful to our health and harmful to our environment. The development of abuse towards farm animals began around the 1940’s when the
McDonald’s brothers developed the idea of a fast food system. This fast food system ran the kitchen almost as though it were a factory. The burgers only cost about 15 cents, which was only half the cost of a regular burger at the time. Their fast food system was a huge success and by
1958 they had sold their 100 millionth burger. McDonalds is now one of the biggest fast food chains in the world, and big fast food chains want big suppliers. Since their success rate was very high, so was the demand for their burgers, which required a lot of meat from farms. In order to meet these high demands for meat, farms transformed into meat factories and began to manipulate the way these animals were raised, fed, and killed. Once money was brought into the picture, farmers turned into business men who were no longer concerned about how great the
quality of their meat was, but how quickly and inexpensively they could produce it. “Everything we’ve done in modern industrial agriculture is to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper” (Kenner,
Food Inc.).
When making profits and harvesting meat as quickly as possible is the meat industry’s main goal, their concern for animal welfare is almost nonexistent. One of the most abused animals in the industry is chickens. About 8 billion chickens are consumed per year in the United
States. This is most likely because they're so high in demand by consumers, and where there is high demand, there’s high profits and high consequences. PETA’s short documentary
Glass
Walls, narrated by Paul McCartney, exploits the methods used by meat industries to raise and slaughter their animals. “...[chickens] are crowded into filthy sheds by the tens of thousands, and forced to live in their own excrement… Hens… are crammed into cages so small that they can’t do anything that is natural or important to them, not even spread a single wing.” (
Glass Walls
)
Chickens are crammed into these small spaces because the industry wants to use up as little space as possible to raise as many chickens as possible to make as much money possible.
However, chickens are very territorial so, “when you throw too many of them into same, small cage [or shed], they are likely to attack each other” (LandisMarinello). Instead of taking the proper action of giving chickens more space to prevent them from attacking each other, the industry took the easy and cheap way out and began debeaking chickens so they couldn’t harm each other. “The ends of their sensitive beaks are cut off with a hot blade causing chronic pain that studies have shown last for more than a month.” (
Glass Walls)
Other chickens are confined to cages for eighteen months. Within that time their muscles shrivel up, bones weaken and break from lack of use, and feet are torn from standing on the metal wire for so long. On their way to
