Just recently in class we watched a documentary called Food Inc. In this documentary, the workings of the food industry come to light. Watching this documentary as a vegetarian just starting out, I was horrified so much that tears were brought to them. The condition these animals live in is absolutely terrible, and I feel terrible that I spent 19 years of my life eating meat. The value of life is far too great for the cows, chickens, and pigs who are being shoved into tight quarters where all they know are the others surrounding them and the walls around them.

Many companies use the opportunity of a high demand and decide to get more bang for their buck. Pumping animals with antibiotics to make them have more meat is no way to go about this problem,  yet that’s exactly what they did. Now these animals are so large that they can’t even carry themselves. In the movie, it shows scenes of cows trying to walk on broken ankles and chickens trying to stand but failing because of how heavy they are. And not only do these affect the animals, but also the people who eat them. The antibiotics being pumped into these animals can cause bacteria to form to resist them. This bacteria can be dangerous if meat isn’t cooked properly.  So you’d think that knowing the use of antibiotics in food decreases the quality of life for both animals and some humans would prevent people from being allowed to raise animals this way, but that sadly is not the case.

I believe that all living things have the right to a good and happy life. This is why I initially became vegetarian. After watching Food Inc. I realized that the reasonings behind stopping meat consumption runs way deeper. This isn’t just about how food production works in the meat packing industry. It’s about the fact that people know and understand and SEE what’s going on right in front of their faces, yet refuse to anything about it. These our the leaders of our country, people who have most say in what’s going into our grocery stores. They know people have died from E.coli contamination and have gotten sick from salmonella, but here we still are.