Alvarado 1

Damaris Alvarado

Professor Batty

English 101

13 October 2019

The Ethics Of Eating In Class Essay

In the article “Ethics Of Eating” by Pete Singer it talks about the unethical treatment of

animals for global meat consumption. Although, there is a very fast growing population’s

demand for food, on the other hand as humans we should not be jeopardizing the life ofanimals

by making them go through torture, slaughtering them just to fill up our bellies; because, for

animals confined in factory farms food has to be grown for them that the animals burn up that

food’s energy which adds to the amount of food available to us, when consuming an animal the

consumer is also going to digest what it was that the animal ate, which sometimes is litterto

amonia droppings, and the way that factory farms handle animals is horrificaly unethical as

farmers drag animals through painand suffering.

Raising animals for global meat consumption can most of the time lack of quality food

consumption for the animal to digest. As Singer mentions in “The Ethics Of Eating”, “...Disease

was caused by feeding the cattle the brains and nerve tissue of sheep. People who naively

believed that cows ate grass discovered that beef cattle in feed lots may be anything from corn to

fishmeal, chicken litter (complete chicken droppings) and slaughterhouse waste.” Eventually

meat consumers majority of the time have absolutely no idea what has been fed to the meat they

are consuming. Even for the farmers that do grow food for animals, animals need and burn up
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the energy from that food and human consumers end up with a very small fraction of the food

value that are fed to them, usually no more than one-third.

Food consumption from factory farm animals also leads to another problem with food

availability to us. In “The Ethics Of Eating” Singer talks about the reality food value we gain

from eating meat saying, “Animals burn up most of that food’s energy just to breathe and keep

their bodies warm, so we end up with a small fraction… as little as one-tenth--of the food value

that we feed them. By contrast, cows grazing on pasture eat food that we cannot digest, which

means they add to the amount of food available to us.” So in reality meat consumption does not

truly benefit us in the long run.

The unethical handling from factory farmers to animals is undeniably startling. Newborn

babies are separated from their mothers, made anemic and are kept in narrow stalls they cannot

they cannot even turn around in. Animals are not granted a minimally decent life, or even go

outdoors to see the day of light. Factory farms also are detrimental to the health of these animals

as the levels of harsh chemicals in the air such as ammonia stings and hurt the lungs of animals.

In “The Ethics Of Eating” Singer explains the suffering of animals mentioning “Slaughtered at

only 45 days old, their immature bones can hardly bear the weight of their bodies. Some collapse

and are unable to reach food or water, soon die… aggressive birds are likely to pick to death the

weaker hens in the cage. To prevent this, producers sear off all birds’ beaks with a hot blade. A

hen’s beak is full of nerve tissue… but no analgesic or anesthetic is used to relieve pain.” Female

pigs are taken out of the sow as fast as possible to be made pregnant again. I believe that no

animal should go through that for the sake of filling up our belly.
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Although it is true that there is a fast growing demand for food and one cannot deny that

from a young age most humans have been taught that meat is necessary for our health, I argue

that consequently the result will not only be animal suffering on an even greater scale, but

environmental damage and rise in diseases such as cancers and heart diseases will grow for in

humans.
Paraphrased comments I received

- Need to work on a composed paragraph with a valid argument that opposes the

thesis, yet is also fully debunked.

- Presented an intro, a body with integrated support, and a conclusion, all connected

back to the thesis.

- Provided direct quotes from the reading as well as specific and concrete

examples; also avoids plagiarism.