Is Animal Abuse Really Necessary?
A Life Full of Fear
Animal abuse may not be the biggest of world issues, but it should at least get a mention. Once one delves into this large topic, they realize the severity and diversity of the problem. There are many different kind of animal abuses, ranging from factory farming, puppy mills, circus cruelty, fur farming, testing, provoked fighting- and the most common- domestic abuse.
Dog fighting and domestic abuse are among the most common animal abuses. While domestic abuse is solely because the owner cannot handle an animal- cannot handle themselves- fighting is more for the thrill and profit. People place high stakes on dog fighting, making the trainers a considerable amount of money on a regular basis. Humans are thrill seekers, and the fight between two animals is all thrill to those who attend and train the dog fights.
Puppy Mills are a very common type of breeder that specialize in pumping out a lot of dogs in a short amount of time. The female dogs are constantly pregnant, and often malnourished. As a result, the puppies are often disfigured, or are already dead when they are born. The survivors are often mistreated, and see little to no veterinary care, a cause of many diseases found in puppy mill dogs.
The most brutal of all of these are usually the industrial aspects; the testing, the farming, and the circus acts. Because the humans are only in it for the money, they do not give a passing thought to the conditions of the animals in their care. The testing is only for the benefit of humans, the farming is only to mass produce meat and fur so as to make more money quickly, and the circus is purely entertainment- all at the animal's expense.
Some might argue that animal testing is necessary to make sure our products are safe for human use, and I agree that we do need to find the safeness of products before we release them to the public but is it necessary to test on animals? Maybe 50 years ago, but with the stem cell research that has developed in the past years we can reproduce human epidermis (skin) now, and it is a relatively inexpensive option to animal testing. Where as animals, housing, feed, maintenance, and disposal are needed to keep animal testing labs open and able to test for years, reconstructed human epidermis may be more expensive to buy in a short time, but the overall price is a lot less expensive than keeping animals.
A lot of meat eaters don't know where their food comes from. They probably have an idealized vision of a country farm with a wooden fence keeping in a few hens. This is not so. In fact, huge warehouses, flooded in artificial lighting 24 hours a day are where the hens are kept now. These chickens are selectively bred and genetically altered to produce bigger thighs and breasts. This creates birds that are so heavy, that their bones cannot support their weight, making it difficult for them to stand. And it's not just the hens that are kept in these poor conditions; hogs, turkey, and cattle are also factory farmed. The conditions in which the animals are kept most often lead to broken bones, infected wounds, heart conditions(from the hormones), stress related disorders, starvation, and death.
Animal abuse is subtly pushed into the back of the media, not much coverage other than PETA ads, and the occasional show are given to it, but attention should be given to it. Animal abuse is a major problem in our society, and by correcting it with fines, jail sentences, and stricter laws we can correct our society to treat animals in a humane fashion. Like it has been said; “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
