By Earthscope reporter, Jillian Johns
The ASPCA estimates that around 40% of households own a pet. That means about 40% of people have an animal living in their house in which they treat as they would a child. But what makes these animals different than pigs, chickens, cows, and goats? The Hindu society even worships and respects cows, feeling that they are superior to themselves. Why is it okay to slaughter and kill these types of animals so inhumanely, even though they are not much different than animals we keep at home?
Gene Baur, the creator of Farm Sanctuary, a place where abused farm animals can live in plenty of space with proper food, stated, “In those [animal exploitation and factory farming] businesses the animals are often fed the cheapest thing possible. It’s legal and common, for example, for cows to be fed chicken manure, which sounds crazy, but it is something that is done because it’s a cheap item that the cattle industry can get and at Farm Sanctuary the animals there are seen as our friends, not our food, so things there are completely different.”
Animals have consciousnesses and they all aren’t really different than humans either, however we still continue to slaughter, break, run over, confine the animals where they cannot even walk around, for the sole purpose of then being able to eat them. We kill living beings without anesthesia for our own consumption.
But the animals aren’t the only ones being harmed by the practice of factory farming. “The animals are kept in these filthy, stressful conditions and they are routinely fed enormous quantities of drugs just to be kept alive,” Baur explained, “and that’s resulting in the development of antibiotic resistant pathogens that are sickening people and, in some cases, people are dying because the antibiotics that used to treat these diseases are no longer able to do so.” While some may be able to turn their back on the animal abuses, they won’t be able to turn from human harm, especially if it is someone they love. How we treat these animals says so much about who we are as people and most, if they knew what was going on, would opt not to treat animals cruelly.
According to Baur, “[About] 70% of the corn and 90% of the soybeans grown in the US are fed to farm animals and those crops are grown with enormous amounts of herbicides and pesticides and those get into the groundwater, they get into the environment and they impact our health.” This is a substantial amount of resources we are using to obtain food. Plants get their energy directly from the sun, so when animals eat plants the energy is passed on to them, but usually only around 10% of the energy is able to be transferred. Let’s say there were 100 bean plants; those would only be able to feed 10 animals, and those 10 animals would only be able to feed one human. Now if we ate only plants, in the same amount of resources, 10 people would be fed, rather than just one. In order to feed the greatest amount of people, the most sustainable method would be to eat plants.
The huge amounts of animals bred in order to feed the growing human population, increases the environmental impact placed upon our planet. “Not only are we putting a lot of greenhouse gasses into the environment through the production process with animal agriculture but we’re also destroying some of the planet’s best ways to clean the air. The rain forests have been called the lungs of the planet and we’re cutting them down to grow feed crops for animals.” It has been estimated that 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions are coming directly from farm animals, especially from cows and their methane emissions, causing global warming and climate change throughout the planet. And especially in the drought we are in, we must be even more environmentally conscious of the resources and huge amounts of water needed to support one animal.
So why are we allowing for this abuse to happen? And what can you do to help prevent it? To oppose this factory farming, eat meat from humane sources, eat less meat, or become a vegetarian or vegan altogether. Tell people about these poor animals, go visit farms, educate yourself as well as others. If other people see what you are doing to change your ways, they may become inspired, change their own ways, and thus begin a domino effect. Be the start of that effect, just like Gene Baur was. And as he said, “If we can live well without causing unnecessary harm and unnecessary slaughter, why wouldn’t we?”
To learn more about Gene Baur, Farm Sanctuary, and what you can do, visit http://www.farmsanctuary.org/
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