Factory Farming Essay

To begin, the question is Should factory farming be put to an end. Factory farming is a system that raises livestock to food. They raise the animals indoors to confine spaces. Factory farming was established in the 1960s by scientist that believed that in order to feed the rapidly increasing human population was to use animals as a food source1. Some farmers and economists also agreed to state that too much money and the land was being used to let the animals roam free. Factory farming has been going on for decades despite having many people being concerned about how they treat the animals. This system uses a method such as placing many animals in small spaces and using controlled temperature. Animals are raised to be used for their meat and are sold in stores in many places. Which is why I believe factory farming should be out to an end.

Factory farming is considered unethical. factory farming can be considered unethical due to what happens to the animals. They slaughter the animals that are raised there and sell the meat2. Factory farms products are also had to tell apart from products not made in factory farms, which doesn’t give the consumer much of an option if they want to it from a factory farm. Factory farming has economic value as they use the meat they gain and see it to stores and companies. They can make up to 2.5 million dollars a year3. They sell their product for lower prices due to the care of the animals and to increase pay. According to Why Factory farming is not just cruel but also a threat to all life on the planet “Every day there is a new confirmation of how destructive, inefficient, wasteful, cruel and unhealthy the industrial agriculture machine is. We need a total rethink of our food and farming systems before it’s too late” (Zee, 2017). This statement shows that the way factory farms are running is concerning politicians as well as the people. This is because of the treatment of the animals is believed to take away animals’ rights. According to the farmers that animals don’t specifically describe the type of animals that are protected by these rights. “Every day there is a new confirmation of how destructive, inefficient, wasteful, cruel and unhealthy the industrial agriculture machine is. We need a total rethink of our food and farming systems before it’s too late” (Lymbery, 2015). This proves that politicians see the different problems caused by factory farming.

Factory farming is worldwide and affecting every country. Countries like Asia, China, Brazil, and America. In America, they began to make progress on animal welfare4. In some stores like Walmart and McDonald’s have decided to change from battery-caged eggs to egg-laying hens. In Asia, they use antibiotic which cause an impact on the antibiotic resistance in Asia. The growth of Asia meat production causes an increase in greenhouse gases, and as a result a rise in temperature. “The use of antibiotics in factory farms in Asia is set to more than double in just over a decade, with potentially damaging effects on antibiotic resistance around the world” (Harvey, 2017).China is known to have some of the largest companies in factory farming in the world. China has the largest population and it is still increasing; therefore, China must supply a large amount of meat. China’s factory farms are causing damage to the environment. Some danger such as the “dead zone” in the South China Sea5. The wasted that is produced by the animals that was harvest is one of the biggest sources of water pollution causing the dead zone. In Brazil, they also have factory farms, but they are struggling to the forest, grasslands, and meet the climate6. Although having trouble maintaining the environmental problems Brazil economic power has increased. Factory farming has caused both negative and positive effects around the world.

Next, there have been disputes on whether factory farming should be put to an end. The argument has taken many sides. One side being the affirmative side, and this said thinks it should be shut down because of the cruelty with the animals that are forced to be there. According to Debate.org “Many animals never touch the ground or see direct sunlight”, this showing that so many animals are quite in such small confinement that some even die from suffocation. Chickens are genetically modified and made so that they can’t stand, and their bones are made so that they can’t support their own body weight. The hens are beaks and toes are cut to avoid them from attacking each other, and the roosters are killed when they’re born by preventing them from breathing. The meat produced by factory farming is very low in quality which is why it is sold so cheaply7. It is low quality because the meat is sucked off the animals’ bones by a machine and is put back together which includes parts of the organisms that some would say shouldn’t be congested being testicles, eyes, and lips8. The animals that are used are dosed with drugs such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone to increase the rate of growth. These drugs may be passed down to a consumer and cause major health issues. Which is why factory farming should be shut down.

To contrast, others believe that factory farming should stay open. According to the article Positives of Factory Farming that factory farming in one of the most effective way to produce meat. It also helps growing countries sustain having a higher efficiency system of food output. People have agreed that factory farms are the only way to produce a big source of meat in such little time. Factory farming also increases the rate of money due to it selling so well with consumers. Phil Lempert is one of America’s top food trend-watchers and worked as a food editor for NBC News. Lempert states that “A factory farm (only) needs to have 500 beef cattle, 500 dairy cows, sell 500,000 chickens annually or house 100,00 egg-laying chickens (Factory Farm Nation 2015). When most people think about factory farms they picture thousands of animals crowded in very small spaces for their whole life, but these numbers clarify how a factory farm actually can look like”9. He is saying that factory farms are not what we originally think, and the animals are not crammed with thousands of other animals. Instead, they are put with fewer animals than expected showing that they have some spaces within their confinement.

To begin, my solution is to produce more protection for animals’ rights that includes all animals, to reduce abusive behavior, and allow animals to be outside not in confinement. The solutions according to Christine Chemnitz10 is to stop putting unnecessary administration of drugs in the animals’ food and to prohibit any genetically modified food and have regular farmers produce half the amount of the animal food. Doing this should cancel out the possibilities of having imbalances in nutrients which would provide more nutrients to the animals. There are also many other different methods to try and stop factory farming production. Such as a petition to ban animals abuse on farm animals. They were also an idea to go vegan or to use vegan based products instead of using meat in order to promote animal equality, but there’s a small percentage of that working out since most people eat meat already, so creating a meat alternative like tofu or tempeh. Using alternatives like this could push the way we been eating and will increase the health of organisms. This could work if the alternatives taste like meat or else consumers may catch on and dislike the idea and revert to meat because it would be hard to change from meat to something like meat.

An alternative to factory farming is lab-grown meat. Scientist and entrepreneurs have been trying to provide a more ethical way of providing meat; therefore, they’re creating meat that has been produced by in a laboratory. “Cultured meat, also known as synthetic or in vitro meat, is grown in cell cultures employing many of the same tissue-engineering techniques used in regenerative medicine” (Lewis, 2016). This shows that unlike the meat produced in factory farms lab-grown meat has a positive influence on the human body by having similar techniques as used in medicine. Dutch scientists created the first lab-grown meat and had it sent out to be tested in the real world in 2013 because of this a goal of bringing lab-grown meat on shelves in stores began to pick up. There also other alternative meat sources like plant-based products some being like the impossible burger. These other possible alternative sources for meat could lead the world into a new age of not killing animals for meat and the increase in animals will produce more food for the other animals causing them not to starve. After, that problems like the increase in greenhouse gases may decrease, so the environment wouldn’t have to struggle to survive.

In conclusion, the question was should factory farming be put to an end. Factory farming is the use of animals in a confinement-controlled environment to produce meat. This method was found in the 1960s in order to provide animal protein for the rapidly increasing population. Some believe that the method used in factory farming is unethical because they raise the animals in harsh conditions and use machines to rip the meat off their bones and reconstruct it back together, but it helps a country economical value by increasing the amount gained by this source of meat. Factory farming is global and local and can be found in large countries like China and America. China is the country with the largest population use factory farming to provide a lot of meat for the people, but in America, they still use factory farming, but they are taking steps away from it by having some stores stop selling products use in factory farms. Other people and I believe that factory farming should be put to an end because of the way they treat animals. The people believe that it takes away their rights as animals, so to allow them to have their rights we should stop these farms. Others believe that it should stay in play because it is one of the best sources of meat production for a large population. Alternatively, we have produced a new type of meat that doesn’t evolve any death and it’s lab-grown meat.

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