Speech - Meat Makes Money

Meat Makes Money

Joey Vranicar

200 Pounds. This is how much meat the average American consumes annually. This mass consumption begs this question: “Where is all of this food coming from?”Animals around the country are being crammed into factories and slaughtered. With such a demand for meat nowadays, it is near impossible to harvest these animals without them being mistreated. The way the food industry works in America, animals are being exploited and forced to suffer through harsh factory conditions for the sake of fueling big corporations’ greed for money. With the USDA not taking enough action against these corporations, we have to take it upon ourselves to send a message.

Animals have rights, even the ones being made into food. According to USDA.gov, the “FSIS does not hesitate to take enforcement action against establishments that fail to meet humane handling requirements.”While the USDA uses the word “humane” in their enforcement statement, there is still so much torture that animals being made into food have to endure. This is possible because USDA’s regulations are very ambiguous, and they never specify what humane is. What the USDA says is “humane” may be what most people would call “torture”. But we do not know because the USDA never specifically states its regulations. This is not to put the blame on the USDA, however. The reason the USDA cannot enforce legitimate humane animal rights in these factories is because the USDA would have to shut down every big corporation. Big corporations will do whatever it takes to make the most money, and harshly slaughtering animals is, indeed, the most efficient way to make money. The corporations will not listen to anyone, not even the USDA, if it means making less money. And if the USDA made stricter laws the meat industry might collapse altogether.

Why should we be concerned with the welfare of animals that we are going to eat? Some people argue that animals cannot comprehend pain, and die without knowing what’s going on. If this is true, then why do we have laws against the abuse of domestic animals? These animals are not much different than the ones being slaughtered and shipped to grocery stores, and yet, according to peta.org, “the more than 16 billion animals who are killed for food every year in the U.S. have little legal protection from cruelty that would be illegal if it were inflicted on companion dogs or cats.” Americans should take a second to recognize the pain that these animals have to go through to become food, and know that these are living, breathing creatures just the same as us. Some people might also say that there are already laws being enforced by the USDA that enforce animals’ rights while being made into food. But as I have already mentioned, these rights have a moral ambiguity, and some factories are not even checked that they are treating animals justly. According to Food Inc, “In 1972, the FDA conducted approximately 50,000 food safety inspections. In 2006, the FDA conducted 9,164.” These facts only show the digression of animal’s rights; how far will we go?

Only a drastic change will solve this problem in the food industry. Most people eat meat every single day. If you are one of these people, I urge you to take one day out of every week and go meatless. This will send a message to the big corporations that they are doing something wrong and trust me; they will realize it when they are losing money. By forcing their salaries to plummet, they will do anything to raise it back up, including treating animal’s in the food processing stage with the respect that they deserve.

Now that you have met your meat, how do you feel? Are you ready to take action and change the modern factory conditions forever? Animals should not be forced to toil in miserable conditions so that the fat cats can have a bigger paycheck. Animals deserve rights, the ones that are being denied to them by the USDA. Animals being made into food should be given just as much consideration as domestic animals; the differences between these animals come down merely to human taste. Animals are maltreated during the meat production process so that big corporations can make money; a change needs to be made. This change will not occur sitting down however, we need to take action and set aside one day to be meatless and let these big corporations know that what they’re doing is inhumane and condemnable.