Meet Your Meat
Often times we look back at practices in our history and wonder how or why they were tolerated. We’ve had public executions, genocides, people’s rights taken away, slavery, and much more. At the time they occurred they were a normal part of life, but are now unethical. One practice that is a major part of people’s lives today is eating meat. Many people today are realizing this ethical violation of animal abuse and are turning to veganism and vegetarianism. In
100 years I believe that the practice of eating meat and animal products will cause people to wonder how mankind could have tolerated this for so long.
One reason the practice of consuming animals will be thought of as unethical is because of how poorly animals are treated in factory farms. There are “free range” options--which leads the consumer to believe the animal they are eating was roaming around in rolling, green hills before it was slaughtered. However the U.S.D.A. mostly relies on the producer’s word and have very low standards for what free-range actually is. In these factory farms animals are crammed together in small spaces, walk in their own waste, and are killed cruelly without anesthetics.
Most animals are forced to live in spaces so small that they are unable to turn around and are often deprived of any type of bedding. Living in such unnatural enclosures causes extreme stress and aggression in these animals. To conceal these side effects, drugs are given to animals that act out, which can reach meat consumers, causing illness. In factory farming, the goal is to produce the most, the fastest. In turn animals are treated as products and any consideration for their wellbeing is thrown aside.
In addition to the disturbing way animals are treated in factory farms, another reason eating animals will one day not be tolerated is because of its negative effects on a person’s health. The World Health Organization recently released information on the relationship between

consuming processed meats and types of cancer which showed that eating meats such as beef, pork, veal, and more are linked to colorectal, pancreatic, and prostate cancer. (Q&A on the
Carcinogenicity par. 18). The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics have also stated that
“vegetarians and vegans enjoy...lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes, and lower body mass indexes, as well as lower overall cancer rates,” (Eating for Your Health par. 3). While many of these facts are known by the public, people continue to eat animal products despite knowing its harmful effects on their health.
This practice and information on it have had a great impact on my views of animal consumption. After learning the truth about the consumption of animal products I became a vegetarian a year and a half ago and plan on becoming vegan. I was disgusted when I learned how animals were treated in factory farms. Once I became educated on the horrors of factory farming and the benefits of cutting meat out of my diet, I had to make a change. I could not continue eating meat knowing how it was processed and the impact it had on my health.
Many people are so accustomed to eating meat that they do not see the dangers behind it and would never think to give it up. When they are confronted with the truth about what they are eating, they get extremely defensive. They will say that the animal’s purpose is to be killed and eaten, that you have to eat meat to live, that this is the way God wants it, and countless other excuses—many of which are untrue. Society has justified eating animal products by saying they like the taste of it too much to give it up or that it is too expensive to eat meat substitutes; however, meat is more expensive than its replacements. Humans have been eating meat since the beginning of time, and some feel that itself is justification enough.

While 7.3 million U.S. adults are already vegetarians and 1 million are vegan, there are still many that are uneducated. One of the easiest and most effective ways in stopping this ethical violation is to spread awareness of what is happening in factory farms. With there being countless documentaries and endless information available online, becoming educated is a fairly simple process. You can start by asking restaurants and grocery stores what vegan options they have available and encourage them to supply more. Along with educating people on what is happening to the animals, it is important for people to understand what is happening to themselves. Many are already educated and realize this ethical violation of animal abuse and I believe that in 100 years everyone will wonder how we tolerated it.

Works Cited
"Eating for Your Health." Peta.org
. PETA, n.d. Web. 8 Nov. 2015.
"Q&A on the Carcinogenicity of the Consumption of Red Meat and Processed Meat." World
Health Organization . World Health Organization, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.