Walk into any supermarket and there's an entire aisle dedicated to it, laid out for all to see. Some shops specialise in it and few people think about what it used to be. Yes, believe it or not that meat you eat every dinner - time used to be a living, breathing, walking animal. Yet there are a whole world of vegetarians out there. There are any number of reasons; animal rights, low - fat diets, religion and even if they don't like the taste of meat. Vegetarianism, in recent years, has become a growing fashion trend among celebrities, who are more than happy to endorse it. Fashion, however, is a whole different story in the tapestry that is vegetarianism and animal rights. But with so many meat alternatives out there these days, going vegetarian has never been so easy!
Remember those illustrated books you used to read as a kid? Where the cows would graze with calves and hens and turkeys could run around the yard until the farmers wife came to feed them. Well you can rest assured that those farms are not where meat comes from. Chickens and turkeys are often kept in minuscule cages. These are piled on top of each other and the animals are forced to grow in these cramped conditions. Many are often bred to grow so quickly that they develop painful bone diseases. Hens attack each other in these conditions, oh but don't worry, those wily farmers came up with quite the solution! They cut hens beaks off. Dairy cows often get cuts to their udders from being milked. Twenty fiver per cent suffer from lameness and mastitis, a swelling of the udders. These very often go untreated. Remember the three little pigs who escaped from the wolf? Unfortunately they didn't escape the factory farm. Pigs are kept on concrete floors, not good for their trotters. They are bred so fast, to sizes so big that they can barely walk. Just like hens bite, pigs bite each others tails, they are so bored. So the farmers cut their tails off too! They really like doing that, don't they? Pigs don't even have the sumptuous luxury that is an anesthetic. None of it sounds too nice does it?
Ah, the touchy topic of veganism. Vegans are just extremists who want to be "totally different" right? Well I beg to differ. “The Washington Post”, a reputable newspaper, did some research into vegetarianism and veganism. For the majority of people they are under the impression that cows produce milk no matter what. Just for the fun of it! But do human women produce milk just for the fun of it? Of course not. The same can be said for cows. Cows only produce milk after giving birth. So dairy cows are artificially inseminated, give birth and thus produce milk. Oh and now there's a good few extra calves running around. These are often taken from their mothers, fattened up and transported to the abattoir. The Washington Post “found nine live cattle dangling from an overhead chain”. Not a particularly nice way to end a life.
So how do animals get from farm to shops? Well, it's a painful process if anything. In fish farms and out on the ocean fish are dragged from their homes in nets. They then suffer an agonizing death of suffocation, being crushed or disemboweled. Lets be honest, if someone gave you that list and you had to pick one as your way to die chances are you'd be none to impressed. Chickens and pigs have to endure horrendous journeys to get to abattoirs. They are stuffed into cramped conditions with little or no water. Many arrive with injuries, some dead on arrival. Many chickens are killed when only two months old. Chickens live on average fifteen years in the wild. Many pigs are slaughtered when only six months old. Animals are slung up on huge conveyor belts where their throats are slit. The lucky ones are stunned, though this doesn't always work. KFC have a common practice: boiling live chickens. It kills them and removes their feathers. How convenient! One slaughter house worker, Martin Feuntes, said "the line is never stopped simply because an animal is alive." Not very fair is it?
Well it'd be fair to say that you cant call yourself an environmentalist if you eat meat. Cattle ranching is the number one cause of Amazonian deforestation. It takes fifteen times more water to raise animals than it does plants for human consumption. Oh and in the U.S if you combine all industries they produce less waste than the meat industry. Not really a surprise that the earth is a bit of a mess.
There's more at stake than the environment, there's also human health. There's a lot of saturated fat and cholesterol in meat. This can lead to heart disease, strokes and obesity. Thirteen percent of meat eating children in the UK are obese. However, only two percent of vegetarian/vegan children are obese. That's a big difference. Everyone has heard of E.coli and salmonella, those little guys who cause food poisoning. Well meat, poultry and fish are all covered in them. Cook your food right and you kill them apparently. Bit of a risk though right? We're lucky in Ireland, we have some pretty good legislation about antibiotics in animal food. However, many countries don't. These antibiotics go straight into food eaten by humans. This can have an extremely detrimental effect on the human body and can even lead to an increase in antibiotic immunity.
Unfortunately not everyone is going to go vegetarian or vegan. But a lot could be done to provide much more humane conditions. Animals need not be kept in such cramped conditions, transport made safer and to ensure that animals are slaughtered as quickly and as pain free as possible. Animal testing destroys the lives all over the world each year. This is a practice which must end immediately. Rabbits are not little humans. There are plenty of alternatives to animal products as well. Quorn burgers, soy milk, tofu and plenty of restaurants offer vegetarian meals.
It'd be nice to see the farms from children's books come into existence, or no farms at all. Next time your at the supermarket or in a restaurant maybe go for a veggie burger instead of meat. As Russell Simmons put it "I personally don"t feel it's a good practice to eat anything that might run away from you.'
