The Animal Issue: Cruelty and Factory Farms

Turns out PETA has a lot of reasons why you should stop eating meat. I'll discuss them all individually eventually, but I'll start by briefly listing them.
According to this article at GoVeg.com, a PETA affiliate, you should adopt a vegetarian diet for the following eight reasons:

1. Stop animal cruelty/abuse
2. Animals deserve rights and protection
3. Vegetarian/vegan diets are healthier than regular diets
4. Growing fruits and vegetables are better for the environment than raising livestock is
5. Eating and growing more vegetables and less meat could help solve world hunger
6. Slaughterhouses are unsafe for workers
7. Factory farms are dangerous, unhealthy, and unclean
8. The meat industry doesn't care about consumer health

I could probably argue against most of these points, but that isn't my purpose here. Instead I will begin a (long overdue) analysis of the first point: stopping animal cruelty.


I would imagine that most vegetarians, when asked, would cite concern for animal welfare as the primary reason they adopted a vegetarian diet. GoVeg.com provides several (graphic) descriptions of the cruelty animals face at factory farms, where they are bred and raised to provide meat for human consumption. According to this article, factory farm animals suffer unimaginable horrors, being confined by the thousands to dirty sheds and cages. The article goes on to discuss other horrors of factory farm life:

Animals on today's factory farms have no legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on dogs or cats: neglect, mutilation, genetic manipulation, and drug regimens that cause chronic pain and crippling, transport through all weather extremes, and gruesome and violent slaughter. Yet farmed animals are no less intelligent or capable of feeling pain than are the dogs and cats we cherish as companions.

But that’s not all. Animals are fed massive amounts of drugs to fatten them quickly while keeping them alive in an otherwise fatal environment. Many animals will die before they can be brutally slaughtered while they are still alive.

Okay, so, a lot of this sounds like exaggerated propaganda. At least I thought so. Surely things can’t really be this bad? For us non-believers, a video is provided which, I must admit, I didn’t have the stomach to watch completely. It shows animals in factory farms living in their own excrement, packed into side-by-side cages like products on shelves at the supermarket. Some animals have died from the inhumane conditions. A worker is shown beating several animals.

Clearly, the welfare of these animals is important to many people who ultimately adopt a vegetarian diet. But what about animals living on a conventional farm, the storybook variety we think of when we hear the word “farm?” Surely animals there get to live happy, healthy, and natural lives? What’s wrong with eating those kinds of animals?


I’ll find out.

Works Cited
"Why You Should Consider Adopting a Vegetarian Diet." GoVeg.com. PETA. 21 Oct. 2008 http://www.goveg.com/.

"Cruelty to Animals: Mechanized Madness." GoVeg.com. PETA. 21 Oct. 2008 http://www.goveg.com/factoryfarming.asp.