Animal Farming Chapter Summary

Imagine having to raise your dinner, look it in the eye, and lead it to slaughter. Wouldn't you feel differently about how animals should live and how they should die? Natalie Purcell brought up this idea in “Cruel Intimacies and Risky Relationships: Accounting for Suffering in Industrial Livestock Production”. Animal farming has changed over the past years. When thinking about a farm, it is natural to visualize a small little barn house with several animals roaming the open space enjoying their time. Time has changed and farming has turned into the opposite where animals are now kept in factory farms. The introduction of CAFO to farming is where it all started. CAFO came to be when the demand for food became relatively high and the farm families

Purcell brings up corn ands what its ‘benefits’ are; to fatten the animals in less time. Purcell discusses how corn has had a negative effect on animals, “regular corn feeding wreaks havoc on the cattle’s health, destroying their livers and producing painful gas” (64). Not only is corn fattening the animals in a quick amount of time but it is destroying their livers! When in the farms, they never had to face such health problem. The animals were used to being let out in the open and eating whatever they had opposed to strictly being fed corn. Just like Michael Pollan (2002) wrote “we inhabit the same microbial ecosystem as the animals we eat, and whatever happens to [them] also happens to us” (Purcell 74). In “Farmer in Chief”, Michael Pollan argues that animals should be fed with food that is grown naturally rather than corn. Pollan clarifies the idea that the policy will “wring the oil out of the system and replace it with the energy of the sun, those policies will simultaneously improve the state of our health our environment and our security” (8). Just like i mentioned earlier, “whatever happens to[them] also happens to us”. If they are fed poorly and fattening foods, this will affect their health and will affect us later. Replacing fossil fuels with sunlight will allow the food to be healthier

The government should ban animal confinement and monitor CAFOs from the inside because hundreds and hundreds of animals are kept in tight spaces and are physically being mistreated and harmed by the works. The government should also place a policy where the animals are removed from the feedlots and relocated back to the farms and place a non-therapeutic uses of animal antibiotics because they are fed poorly and fattening diets and are given more than enough portions of antibiotics. Failure to make these improvements will cause animal behaviors to continuously change and hurt, possibly resulting in death, their own specie as if they are not already being mistreated. This is just more depressing and disappointing than hearing about factory farms abusing and killing animals. Workers in these industries will also be able to continuously torture and harm these poor, innocent animals who have done nothing to hurt or harm them. Whether you see it or not, the manner in which the livestock is treated falls in place where it affects literally everything about the world. It is possible to lead to the creation of several health hazards around the world, it affects the climate change, the cost of food and furthermore the eating habits of many Americans. Although one was not able to view how animal cruelty can impact our lives in several ways, please do not be blind about these facts and