People want to think that the meat that they buy came from an animal who lived and died without pain, but then why would exist the phrase: if we had to kill our own meat we would all be vegetarians.
Cows: Every cow is branded on the face and dehorned without anesthesia or painkillers.
Milking cows are kept chained indoors doing no exercise. They receive pesticides and antibiotics to increase milk productivity. Normally cows can live up to 20 years, but milking cows don't live more than 4, collapsing from exhaustion and their meat is used in «fast-food» restaurants.
The captive bolt gun which was designed to put the animals unconscious without causing them pain fires a steel bolt right into the animals brain. After that the cattle is raised up upside down and their throats are cut, to bleed them because their blood is also used. A lot of times the animal doesn't get unconscious with the bolt, he just get immobilized, so when his throat is cut he feels all that pain and all that fluid going to his mouth, so he can chowk in his own blood.
Oh and when do women give milk? After they had their babies. With cows it's the same and when their calf reaches a day of life they are taken from their mother and put indoors getting fed with a diet deficient in iron and low amounts of water. After 4 months of miserable existence they are slaughtered.
Pigs: There are «factories», that's how they call it, where the female pigs get pregnant (they are always pregnant) and give birth to lots's of baby pigs through artificial insemination.
They live in gestation crates where they have no rights to get light from the sun and to move freely. The ground in there is made of concrete with parallel holes, to where the shit goes, they are called waste pits and a lot of babies fall in there, and die drowned in filth.
When the pigs are born their tails are removed, their ears clipped, their teeth cut and they also are castrated without anesthesia or painkillers.
They are handled with electric prods and are often killed with another way of slaughter, electrocution.
Poultry:The biggest companies often slaughter more that 8.5 million birds every week.
Every chicken is debeaked when they are born to prevent cannibalism from frustrated chickens. And they are kept indoors in buildings where can live anywhere from 60000 up to 90000 chickens.
For laying hens, they live in a laying warehouse inside battery cages. In this cages they live overcrowded, what prevents them from spreading their wings.
They are slaughtered in numerous ways but the most common is throat cutting followed by a dive in boiling water to make it easier to remove their feathers.
Seafood: We all know that the oceans are full of inconvenient wastes and the fishes ingest them, and we ingest the fishes, ingesting them also (for example: petroil).
They use advanced electronic equipment to track and find fish. That is followed by laying huge nets on the ocean swallowing everything in their path.
Or maybe you prefer aquaculture raised fishes that live in overcrowded spots where their days are half the duration of ours for them to grow bigger, faster.
Transport: The transport of all this animals is done in overloaded trucks or boats without protection from the weather (either freezing or burning temperatures), a lot of times without food or water, and the responsibles for them often treat them in a brute way, breaking their bones and bruising them.
Millions of animals die during transportation.
The environment: Related to the environment there are a lot of aspects where this industry is destroying biodiversity and our planet in general.
First we have the waste. When animals are being produced by the billions and are being overfed they produce excessive amounts of waste and where does it all go a lot of times? To the oceans and rivers, polluting them and killing their wildlife. But that's not the only down side of this, it can also be prone to the creation of diseases (for example Pfiesteria which is a level 3 biohazard, Ebola is a 4).
Secondly we have the saving of water. Did you know that it takes 15000 liters for each kilo of beef? So now you see that all of your efforts of saving water go to waste by eating meat...
Health: Meat is high in fat which increases the risk of diabetes and heart diseases. Most meat is also high in antibiotics and growth hormones which can promote cancer growth.
Most common arguments against veganism:
But if we all went vegetarian, there wouldn't be enough soil for agriculture in the world! That is not true because you need to remind yourself that animals eat too, and they also eat a lot of food derived from vegetable sources and they eat a lot more that we do. With the land not being used for animal production or crops for their feeding, the land could become a desert or return to it's natural state, helping to overcome global warming.
What about protein? You can't get enough protein from vegetable sources! Yes you can. There are multiple vegetable foods that provide you enough protein for you to live an healthy life. For example: lentils, beans, spinach, broccoli, tofu, sweet potato, among others.
Ok but what about our ancestors? We were used to eat meat for thousands of years! Yes we were used to eat meat, when we were hunters and gatherers but we didn't eat the quantities of meat we eat today. In their daily lives the Neanderthals were used to eat berries, fruits, roots, small animals some times and maybe 2 times a year, big game.
Yes, ok but what about vitamin B12, D and Calcium that we need from the milk to build strong bones? Relating vitamin B12, which is derived from the mud (our ancestors normally ingested it in the waters because they were not as clean as they are these days) you can find lot's of reinforced vegetable foods out there like milks from nuts. Vitamin D you can get enough with just 15 minutes of exposure from the sun or if you can't have that, use supplements. And finally, calcium can be found in green leafy vegetables like spinach.
Plants can feel pain too! Even if that is true, don't forget that a lot more vegetables are produced now with the animal industry than if we were all vegetarians.
But I like meat and I like to eat, plus vegetarian dishes taste bad! There is a big variety of vegetarian dishes out there that taste incredible, are cheap and healthy. I search on
http://www.yummly.co and I go to preferences and add the vegan diet and then all the recipes that will appear are vegan.
But, if after all I've said you still think you can't stop eating meat just please reduce the amount you consume and buy the ones with more quality.
So remember that this animals want to be able to move freely, be comfortable, to not fell pain, to not be hungry and to not feel despair, just like us!
Even after all that I've said there is still much to learn about the animal industry. You can start doing that if you're interested by watching this documentary (It will probably shock you if you dare to watch it all):
This video is good for you to see that these are animals, not just steaks:
You can see by yourself the effect that all of us becoming vegan would have on the planet here:
And finally, you can monitorize your nutrients intake here (I've been using it for some time now and I don't see any problem in my diet).
