Nowadays the problem of animal slaughtering is becoming more and more pressing. More and more people around the world make a choice to become vegan and not to be a consumer of the industry that promotes cruelty. However, the demand for meat and products of animal origin is still very high. The rights of animals are not preserved to the extent they should be. People forget that animals are living beings and that they can feel pain and suffering just as humans do. If people do not want to give up food they should reduce their consumption of any animal-produced product, showing respect for animals as live beings.
The main reason of choosing veganism is the ethical surrounding of the problem. Most people who have chosen not to eat products of animal origin did this with respect to animal rights and with an intention to make this world a better place for all the live beings. They criticize the egoistic nature of people that allows them to kill live beings who are weaker and less protected. They recognize the cruelty that surrounds the animals on the farms and want to stop it.
Also, some people choose veganism because of their religious beliefs. For example, Hinduism and Buddhism forbid consuming products of animal origin. Islamic religion is partly vegan, prohibiting eating of pork. Many people choose not to eat animal products because of concern for their personal health. It is known that meat is rich in fat and can provoke high cholesterol levels and cardiovascular diseases. There are also people who choose to be vegan because of feeling morally guilty for the killed animals or feeling disgust and misperception of the way the animals are treated on farms.
It is important to mention that vegans, unlike vegetarians, do not allow not only meat, but also eggs, milk and honey into their daily diet. They refuse from milk because of the cruel conditions the cows are kept in farms, and generally they believe that continuous yield of milk is not a natural and normal regime for an animal. The eggs are not consumed because of the same reason: the cruel treatment of laying hens on farms. Also, vegans do not eat eggs because the farmers are strictly controlling the population of chicken, renewing the quantity of hens and reducing the quantity of male animals after they are hatched: by grinding or killing in a container with carbon dioxide. Some vegans also exclude honey from their diet because farmers, although care and breed the bees, take their honey away and kill some of the animals, for example, unsuccessful queens and drones.
Vegans do not buy and wear fur, natural leather and do not use things that are made from these materials. This is explained by the fact that fur animals are either hunted for the precious fur or bred in cruel conditions, e.g. incapacious cages, malnutrition and killed. The choice not to wear natural fur and leather are made by many non-vegan people, too. Vegans also avoid a wide range of cosmetics that is tested on animals before production, or uses substances taken from animals, for example fat. Nowadays not in all countries it is required to mark such cosmetics, so vegans have to make their own research on what beauty products they can use.
It may be surprising where the research on veganism can take a person to. It can be discovered that products that are commonly thought as ones that do not contain any products of animal origin, actually do. For example, refined sugar is produced with using bone char to make it whiter, and such alcoholic beverages as wine and beer, are produced with the usage of purifiers that are derived from fish bladders. According to this, a vegan must be very careful about which products he or she chooses to be a part of their diet. Taking into account all the variety of different products (not only food) that are made with involvement of animals, being a vegan is quite a difficult challenge nowadays.
Wilson Bell (758), an author of numerous articles on prevention of cruelty to animals, in one of his articles states that the animal industry portrays the farms as places where the animals are kept in perfect conditions: properly fed and taken care of. Unfortunately, this is nothing more than a myth for the clients, states Bell: in fact, the animals there are terrorized, beaten and killed in a very cruel way. Even the disabled and weak animals share this sad fate due to the high demand for meat in the modern world.
Celine Guivarch and Stephane Hallegatte in their article prove the same in their article. They emphasize the cruel methods which are used on the farms to make the animals obey. Sheep, cows, goats and other animals are mistreated and terrorized so much that some of them cannot even stand on their own. The fact that the animals experience so much pain and suffering impacts the final product that we have as our everyday meals: some scientists believe that specific chemicals and hormones are released into the blood of the animals that can cause harm and damage for human health.
With the development of the technological progress humans invent new and new tools to optimize the production process. We all know about the genetically modified plants that are grown all over the world, usually in order to feed the livestock and to fulfill the high demand for corn and soy in the world. After maintaining a successful experience in the field of agriculture, biological experiments are now concentrated mostly on the animals. Different biochemical experiments are made in laboratories on animals that are no more than just test tubes. People want to breed animals that would grow fast and did not require much care. In this way people actually intervene the way the animals were made by nature. Animals become deprived of the natural right of existence in the way they were originally created. This topic is discussed indetail in the article “Gene Expression; Posttranscriptional Modifications” in the Genes journal (407-409).
Julie Smith and Robert Mitchell discuss in detail the difference between human and animal consciousness (45). In the opinion of these authors, “living with animals provides experiences with and knowledge of animals that are less likely to arise in other contexts where our relationship with animals may be less salient to us” (Smith & Mitchell 2). Some scientists, for example Lustig and Hill, are of the opinion that all of the chemicals produced from animals can be developed in laboratories using chemical synthesis. However, this method is more difficult and expensive. The authors say that several alternatives we humans can find to replace the use of animal products that would help reduce the animals' suffer. Their article opines that the products that the animals are slaughtered for can be manufactured inorganically as well. Hence, humans should stop mistreating animals for such products. Thus, by approaching the issue of treatment of animals from different domains of knowledge, one can find the commonality of thought that animals should be treated in a better manner by humans.
In Western countries, veganism is more common. In a survey of Gallup in July 2012, 2% of Americans called themselves vegans. In the UK in 2001, vegans were 0.4% of the population. According to the BBC in the UK today, there are about 1% of vegans. In Italy, according to the survey of the Eurispes institute in 2010 the vegans make about 1% of the general population. In Israel, at the beginning of 2014 the number of vegans and vegetarians was 5% and 8%, respectively. In the West in recent decades have seen a growing number of vegetarians and vegans. For example, in Germany in 1983 there were only 0.3% of vegetarians in the population, and by 2001 their number according to the results of various polls has reached from 7.3% to 8% of the population. According to various sources, among them there were about 200-400 thousand vegans: from 0.25% to 0.5% of the population (Newport, 2).
As a conclusion it should be stated that the choice of being vegan or non-vegan lies in the responsibility of every person. And while making this choice it should be taken into consideration that animals are live creatures just as humans, and they have their own feelings and consciousness just as people do. The fact that most of domestic animals are weaker than people does not mean that they were created by nature in order to serve as nutrition for people. Moreover, it is scientifically proven that dangerous chemicals are released into the blood of animals that were treated and killed in a cruel way. It means that the meat we eat for dinner can be not as good and healthy as we think of it. In my personal opinion, it is impossible to make all people vegan, but it is possible to control the conditions in which the animals are kept on farms and certify only those farmers that promote respectful treatment of animals. This responsibility lies on the farmers themselves as well as on the government authorities that control the production of meat and products of animal origin. The products of animal origin should be limited in consumption, if people do not want to give up food.
Works Cited
Bell, Wilson B. “Animal Response To Sonic Booms”. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 51.2C (2014), p. 758. Web. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.1912908
Lustig, Max and William Evan Hill. “The .Mu.-Oxo-Difluorophosphines (CF3)2C(OPF2)I,
(CF3)-2C(OPF2)Br, And (CF3)2C(OPF2)H”. Inorganic Chemistry 6.8 (2013): 1448-1450. Web. 2pg. Retrieved from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ic50054a003
Smith, Julie, and Robert Mitchell. Experiencing Animal Minds: An Anthology of Animal-Human Encounters. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, p. 45. Print.
Steiner, Gary. Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, p. 133. Print.
Newport, Frank. "In U.S., 5% Consider Themselves Vegetarians", Gallup, 26 July 2012, p. 2. Web.
