3 A Voice for the Voiceless
Over the last century, millions of people have been able to live longer, healthier lives thanks to the medicines and surgical techniques that were tested on chimpanzees — one of humankind’s closest relatives. Other chimps have helped us make major technological steps, by testing everything from submarines to spacecrafts to make sure that they are safe for human use. So, do we owe them our lives? I find myself forming a total agreement with Jane Goodall. Man was put on Earth to rule, but with wisdom and care, not with greediness and egoism like now. We have used our position on this once beautiful planet to destroy nature and kill animals for personal profit. Chimpanzees do not deserve to live in tiny cages and drive themselves mad. Locked up like criminals, rocking from side to side. I’m chocked how they’re treated by mankind.
Factory farming is an unacceptable way of treating farm animals. Factory farming began in the 1920s soon after the discovery of vitamins A and D. When these vitamins are added to feed, animals no longer have to exercise and don’t need sunlight for growth. This allowed large numbers of animals to be raised indoors all year around. The greatest problem that was faced in raising these animals indoors was the spread of disease, which was combated with antibiotics.
Unfortunately, this trend of mass production has resulted in incredible pain and suffering for the animals. Animals today raised on factory farms have had their genes manipulated and pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals to encourage high productivity. In the food industry, animals are not considered animals at all, they are food producing machines. The chicks that go to the battery will live in a shed with long rows of cages made of wire mesh, with three or more stories on top of each other. The animals live in small cages, 4 chickens are crammed together; the cages have a dimension of 45x50cm (like a large computer monitor).
They lay their eggs on the wire mesh and cannot spread their wings. As a result of this distressing situation they peck at each other.
It’s hard to understand how much the battery hen suffers. Try to thing like a chicken in a tiny cage. You can’t stretch your wings. You’re forced to stand night and day on an askew wire mesh floor that painfully cuts into your feet. The cage walls rip your feathers, forming blood blisters that never heal. The air is so full of ammonia, which is a dangerous gas that makes your lungs hurt, your eyes burn and you could go blind. As soon as you are born, a man will grab you and shear off part of your beak with a hot iron, and your little brothers will be thrown into trash bags as useless alive.
Battery hens live for about one year, then they have laid approximately 300 eggs and the only purpose left for them is to serve in the chicken soup. Male chicks are useless because they don’t lay any eggs so they are killed by methods that are crushing and painful. Man’s treatment is unacceptable. I believe that we can make a difference if we all stop buying battery products.
Another dark chapter in human of Man is animal experiments. Do you think it would be medically or scientifically possible to find a cure by experiment on your perfectly healthy uncle or another family member? Ridiculous isn’t it. Animal experiments are not only wrong in a moral sense, but also in a scientific one. Humans and animals react differents to diseases and medicine. For instance aspirin kills cats and penicillin kills guinea pigs while sheep can eat enormous quantities of arsenic – once the favourite poison of murderers. The bottom line must be that animal experiments are misleading and give a false feeling of safety.
But none of the arguments, which are mentioned above, should weigh more than the following. Humans simply don’t own the authority to deny any living creatures rights. Nature is cruel, but we are worse. I understand and partly accept the use of animals in scientific research, as long as it will benefit us enough to excuse the lost lives. As I see it there has got to be an alternative. In my opinion man should start acting like democratic rulers, not as tyrants. Though the voiceless can’t scream they can suffer.