Going vegan has a prevalent negative misconception and should be incorporated into everyone’s lives because of the factory farm industry’s cruelty toward animals, the contamination within meat and animal products, as well as the long term effects veganism has on your health.
The daily routines within our industry’s factory farms is not common knowledge; the cruel punishment it implements on its animals before even going to the slaughterhouse is unjust. “Modern/ factory farming practices involve substantial pain and/or suffering”. My grandmother owns a farm, so at a very young age, I experienced first hand the slaughtering of pigs, chickens, and cows. It was traumatizing and I swore to myself that I would become an animal rights activist. The animals I saw killed were given no mercy and treated gruesomely. I even saw a tear rolling down a cow’s eye as she was being taken away. Meat and animal product eaters today do not realize that when an animal such as a cow is taken to a factory farm, they physically forced to reproduce in order to continually produce milk while living in unsanitary, overcrowded environments.
These animals are kept alive in these circumstances by the injection of drugs, steroids and antibiotics. By these drugs and modern day technology, farmers make it possible for the animals to undergo severe pain while still not harming the product they are producing. The start of factory farming was used to keep prices of products low; however, in order to do so, the proper treatment of the animals was compromised. The quality of life within a factory farm for a chicken includes living in a space unable to move, beak cut or burned off, trapped indoors, and feeling joint point. Is this the way we would treat our dogs or cats at home? Our modern meat and dairy industry is not the only thing that is unhealthy about this; the meat and dairy products that we actually consume is actually contaminated with harmful ingredients as well.
Animal products and meat are contaminated with harmful bacteria and ingredients. The majority of these products are filled with toxins, hormones, and dioxins. According to Personal Liberty, a component called Staphylococcus aureus is found within most meat at a grocery store and is filled illness provoking bacteria that rejects at least three types of antibiotics. The government also does not screen for this type of “drug- resistant bacteria”. If our produce is contaminated with dangerous bacteria, one would think that consumers would not support it; but they do. By eating this product, it leaves doctors “with few options options for treatment if a human becomes infected.” With dangerous effects, the only true way of avoiding them, is by going completely vegan and animal product free. To a vegan diet, there are many health benefits as well as being an animal rights activist.
Becoming a vegan is often due to the opposition to the poor treatment of animals, but it is also has incredible long-term health benefits to it. Medical News Today refers to it as more of a philosophy rather than a diet. They say that eating animal fats and proteins leads the consumer to a greater risk of developing cancer, arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and many other fatal illnesses. It is even possible to stop or reverse a fatal illness through this drastic lifestyle change. After all, just like a mother breastfeeding, a cow's milk was designed to feed a baby calf, not a human. “Plant-based diets either minimize or completely eliminate people's genetic propensity to developing chronic diseases, such as diabetes type 2, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.”
When eating vegan, you are limited to your choices a bit. In order to get the proper proteins, you eat alternatives to meat such as spinach, flax seeds, beans, lentils, vegetables and other healthy choices that you were most likely not getting enough of as a meat eater. Why eat something that you know is not benefiting your body? Going vegan is one of the absolute best ways to take a stand against animal cruelty and support the humane treatment of living creatures.
Veganism is a great, yet negative, misconception. By eliminating consumption of animal products from your lifestyle, you are standing against factory farming and their cruel treatment of animals, not consuming harmful bacteria filled produce, and receiving the many benefits that going vegan has on your health. With this being said, can you see yourself going vegan?
Sources:
Gleason, Carrie. Animal Rights Activist. St. Catharines, Ont., Crabtree Pub., 2010.
Tanner, Julia. “Clarifying the Concept of Cruelty: What Makes Cruelty to Animals Cruel.”
The Heythrop Journal, vol. 56, no. 5, 2013, pp. 818–835., doi:10.1111/heyj.12122. www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/149636.php
