Animal Cruelty It’s dark, quiet, and you’re all by yourself. You whine and yell for help but nobody seems to hear you. The people you thought were your family abandoned you, left you all alone in a small confined cage. There is no place to use the bathroom, other than where you stand. The awful stench of your faeces grows worse and worse each second. The only food they left you with, you ate in the first day. Now the only thing keeping you alive is your desperation to eat and drink your own waste and the will to survive. You are a dog left to die by its owners, with the thought that you are lower than humans and have no real importance or worth. I have always been an animal lover and it has always disgusted me to see an animal being mistreated. Even when I am watching a movie and an animal gets hurt I always cringe with sadness. I remember I had these neighbors; we were good friends with them. They always wanted to have a dog but either they never had the money to take care of a pet or they just did not know how. That never stopped them from constantly having a dog. I remember two specific dogs they had, one was a mixed bulldog, Daisy, and the other was a Jack Russell Terrier, Jack. Daisy was such a beautiful sweet dog, but the way she was treated was poor. If they did not have any dog food they would feed her cereal and milk. They also considered spraying her with a hose while she ran around in the backyard a bath. The worst thing that happened to her was that one day Daisy decided to climb their fence and she got her leg caught and was hurt. They didn’t have the money to get it checked so Daisy had a permanent limp. Later they realized Daisy was too much of a responsibility for them and without hesitation they just gave her away. The other dog Jack was full of energy. He was friendly, playful, but he wasn’t trained very well. They grew tired of having to clean up after him so they decided to give him away as well. I believe dogs have to be somewhat affected by being given away once they are attached to a family. This time I couldn’t let them give away another dog to people they hardly knew so I asked my mother and father if we could keep him and they said yes! He became a member of my family. Animal cruelty is a growing problem in today’s society and it needs to be stopped as soon as possible. Animal cruelty happens all over the world, every single day. There are many different reasons why animals are mistreated whether it is from people’s weird and cruel desires or from unintentional actions. All together animals are abused by the choices we make. Every year three to four million cats and dogs are euthanized. Every year over 9 million chickens are killed for meat. Animals are slaughtered for clothing and for food all over the world. When a person is cruel to an animal it may come from a deep mental disturbance. Research has shown that people who start out by killing and torturing animals usually go on to torturing and killing humans. Robert K. Ressler who works for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says “Murders very often start out by killing and torturing animals as kids”. Criminals who are more violent and aggressive are more likely to have abused animals as children. Patients who tortured dogs and cats were surveyed and it was found that they had high levels of aggression towards people as well. I believe people abuse animals because they have built up anger or they have some kind of mental illness. They start off with animals because animals can’t really fight back or tell someone what happened. When someone tortures and kills animals as a kid it just shows what type of person they will turn out to be in the future. They will soon get the feeling that hurting and killing dogs and cats is not enough. They will want to take it to the next level which is humans. All around I think these people are sick human beings that need help and should be seriously watched because these are the serial killers in the world. You are inside your home just minding your own business when the person you thought that cared for you comes home. They are in a really bad mood and they decide to kick and punch you. They had a bad day at work and are taking their frustrations out on you. They repeatedly punch you until you’re bleeding and your bones break. Then to finish you off they pick you up and throw you at the wall. This is a situation many dogs have to go through every day. They have to deal with their owners not being able to control their anger and taking it out on them. There are countless numbers of reported animal abuses just like this. On www.KCRA.com, “Where the News Comes First”, a man named Daniel Baxter was arrested in California for throwing a puppy against the wall. He was having an argument with his girlfriend and was angry because she would not have sex with him. The puppy had to be euthanized due to its injuries. I think animal abuse is a very serious and needs to be taken more seriously. I do not think it is a bad thing if someone values an animal’s life less than that of a human’s but it depends how much less. I truly believe animals have rights and deserve to be treated with love and respect. It needs to be known that it is wrong to harm an animal. There are so many situations where a person is being charged with abusing an animal and are shocked because they didn’t think it was against the law. People need to know beforehand what responsibilities come with owning a pet and the way a pet should be treated no matter how the owner’s day went. There is a big controversy on whether animal testing should continue or not. There are even scientists who argue whether if it is accurate. On the website, www.ohsukillsprimates.com, Dr. Ray and Jean Greek said "Animal experimentation is not necessary. It is expensive. It is inaccurate. It is misleading. It consumes limited resources. And further, it is detrimental to the very species it professes to be working to help -- humankind." Dr. Mark Feinberg, who is a leading AIDS researcher, has a similar view on animal testing. He says "What good does it do you to test something (a vaccine) in a monkey? You find five or six years from now that it works in the monkey, and then you test it in humans and you realize that humans behave totally differently from monkeys, so you've wasted five years.”, there are scientists who believe animal testing has contributed a lot to science. At the website www.animalresearch.info, The Department of Health says "Research on animals has contributed to almost every medical advance of the last century. The NHS would be unable to function effectively were it not for the availability of medicines and treatments that have been developed or validated through research using animals", a committee from the House of Lords Session has the same view as the Department of Health. They say, "On balance, we are convinced that experiments on animals have contributed greatly to scientific advances, both for human medicine and for animal health. Animal experimentation is a valuable research method which has proved itself over time... Toxicological testing in animals is at present essential for medical practice and the protection of consumers and the environment, as it often provides information that is not currently available from any other source.” I believe animal testing is wrong, every year 100 million animals die in experiments and tests. There has to be another way we can test and experiment without using animals. They are tortured and after each test they must be suffering from pain. They are constantly injected with different viruses and vaccines to see if it works or not. Maybe we would be a lot further in AIDS research if we did not test on animals. I mean a vaccine can’t really have the same effect on me and a rabbit. It just doesn’t make any sense. The only suitable test subject for man is man. It is wasting a lot of time if we really have to wait five years to see if a vaccine works or not because it went through a monkey first. When I was in 10th grade, I was in a writing class and I was given the opportunity to write about what really goes on in a slaughterhouse. I was eager to get started because anything to do with animals always excited me. As I did research on slaughterhouses I honestly couldn’t believe what I found. The living conditions are atrocious, animals die before they can even be used. They die because of crowded cages, low hygiene, and stress. There are just faeces, blood, and dead animals everywhere. Animals are treated awfully; they are hanged from the ceiling and cut open and are forced to bleed out before they actually die. Chickens are stuffed together in cages and they get their beaks cut off and are being plucked while they are still alive. Male cows get castrated and it is not even done in a dignified way. The male cow’s genitals are just cut off with some sort of blade while the animal is still awake and alive. Gail Eisnitz wrote a book called “Slaughterhouse.” It documents what really goes on in slaughterhouses and has even quotes from men who have worked in slaughterhouses before. This quote is from a worker whose job was to unload pigs. He says "In the winter, some hogs come in all froze to the sides of the trucks. They tie a chain around them and jerk them off the walls of the truck, leave a chunk of hide and flesh behind. They might have a little bit of life left in them, but workers just throw them on the piles of dead ones. They'll die sooner or later." This next worker talks about how they deal with weaker animals. He says, “The preferred method of handling a cripple is to beat him to death with a lead pipe before he gets into the chute... If you get a hog in a chute that's had the shit prodded out of him, and has a heart attack or refuses to move, you take a meat hook and hook it into his bunghole (anus)...and a lot of times the meat hook rips out of the bunghole. I've seen thighs completely ripped open. I've also seen intestines come out." These are just a few quotes from her book and it really depicts how animals are being treated. If we can’t believe the men who actually doing the job and are working in a slaughterhouse than whom do we believe. I am truly disgusted by what really goes on in slaughterhouses and I hope people can really make a change for the better. Animals in slaughterhouses are supposed to be stunned or killed instantly not left to suffer. I am never going to understand what brings a human to do harm to an animal but it is our job to do what we can to stop any signs of animal cruelty. In our homes we need to watch out for signs of aggression coming from our family members because if they act out on our pets then it may lead to a bigger problem. We need to report any form of animal cruelty, even if you drive past a dog chained up outside, that’s a form of cruelty and animal control needs to be notified. I am sure there are people in this world willing to take the spot of a poor defenseless animal in an experiment lab. If there are no volunteers, how about offer some kind of payment. There are so many things they we can be doing as a society to help stop animal cruelty, we just need to open our minds and hearts for change.

Cited Websites -ASPCA” Animal Cruelty Facts.net (The largest source of Animal Cruelty Online)” -Eisnitz, Gail “Slaughterhouse” 1997
-Department of Health “Research on animals has contributed to almost every medical advance of the last century." June 2001 http://www.animalresearch.info/en/facts/quotes/doh01
-Dr. S Ray “Doctors Speaking Out Against Animal Testing” 1997-2000
-Hugo, Victor “Animal Slaughter, abuse, and cruelty. Behind the scenes” 2008
KCRA “Police: Man throws Puppy against wall, Is Arrested” 8 August 2011
PETA “Animal Abuse and Human Abuse, Partners In Crime”