Meat: Is It Really Worth Eating? By: Noah Canales
Meat: Is It Really Worth Eating? By: Noah Canales
Meat: Is It Really Worth Eating? By: Noah Canales
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. These were the
words of famous musician Paul McCartney while narrating a documentary about raising
the awareness of the proclaimed cruelty and abuse brought upon many common livestock
animals we eat every day. There are always going to be the activists writing biased blogs
on saving the animals from a torturous death and such. And there are those involved with
the accused slaughter houses that will deny everything just to keep people buying their
products without question. There’s no point in trying to stop all major meat producing
companies from dong what they do (which is making meat). The main question flying
around is whether the processes that take place in order to mass produce the meats we eat
everyday healthy and humane for both livestock and consumer. A majority of the world
Before we take a look on the grueling facts about what today’s processes are like
and how it affects consumers, we should go back in time when major companies were
first selling to rising fast food chains around the 1900s. Back then, many farmers were
trying to find ways to naturally cure pork and other meats due to not having refrigerators
like we do today. It was around this time that major companies began to use chemicals in
the everyday meats like bacon (Living History Farm) Mass production meats were
becoming especially popular among the 40’s and 50’s, so companies needed to find a
Meat: Is It Really Worth Eating?
way to fatten up livestock by any means necessary. Sadly the again turned to chemicals
for the answer. Consumers would never notice until side effects of constant nausea and
increasing cholesterol levels. It was at this time where the demand really didn’t leave the
producers many other choices even with their current stronghold on meat marketing
prices (Peta). It may seem bad, but these methods are actually much healthier than those
It’s shocking enough how unhealthy some of the meats that we eat almost every
day, but it’s even worse to find out how that meat made it all the way to the freezer isle.
The basic process seems pretty simple: a major slaughter house company give the cow’s
owner a date to bring is or her cow there, sign some liability forms and send your cow of
to be turned into the many frozen meats you may see at your local grocery store less than
a few weeks later. That’s only the surface of what happens, and the most gruesome parts
of the process is what slaughterhouses don’t want you to see. Here are the noted words of
“…they will get on another truck and travel 100 miles to Liberal, Kansas, to a
National Beef plant there. They will be put in a pen in a parking lot and wait their
turn, and go up the ramp, and through a blue door. I was not allowed to go
through the blue door. The kill floor is not something that journalists are allowed
But I have reconstructed what happens on the other side of the blue door. What
happens is that the animals go in single file. At a certain point, they pass over a
bar, their legs on both sides, and the floor slowly drops away, and at that point
they're being carried along sort of on that bar, which is a conveyor belt, and they
then pass through a station where there's a man on the catwalk above. He's
holding an object that looks like a power nailing gun or something. It's a
This essentially injects a metal bolt. It's about the size and length of a thick pencil
into its brain, right between the eyes, and that should render the animal brain
dead.
At that point, chains will be attached to his rear legs. He will be lifted up by the
chains. The chains are attached to an overhead trolley, and then he will be bled.
Another person in another station will stick a long knife in and cut his aorta and
And from there he goes through a series of stations to clean him and to remove his
hide. One of the real problems is that the animals have spent their [lives] lying in
their manure, are smeared and caked with the stuff, and they're entering the food
plant. And so many steps are taken to make sure that the manure doesn't infect the
It seems pretty clear that the way that massively produced meats like beef have changed
quite a bit over the years in the name of convenience and efficiency. There are still many
Meat: Is It Really Worth Eating?
arguments about how humane meat production should be, let alone if it’s possible for it to
be considered a humane process at all (Arguments For and Against “Humane Meat”)
Speaking of the common debate of meats “humanity”, there are several points
supporting its humanity, or the lack of it. To illustrate, most slaughterhouses raising and
killing pigs tend not to use anesthesia when cutting off the tails of the swine before
killing them. The breeding sows (mothers) are held in pens so small it allows them no
range of motion, and is just big enough for the mother and newborn piglets. Supporters of
making the pig’s lifestyle more humane propose creating more free range cage along with
anesthetics to be injected before they are put down for a less painful death. (Arguments
For and Against “Humane Meat”) On the opposite side, the main point of the argument is
that there is no such thing as humane meat when all farms / slaughterhouses will kill the
male offspring because they cannot birth offspring and are useless due to artificial
insemination. Another point they have proven is that some of the standard that are to be
considered humane are becoming highly unrealistic, even for animal standards. Cost is a
very important factor as well. With the processes that are used now it may be impossible
for some companies to afford even changing some of their ways even if they wanted to.
(Arguments For and Against “Humane Meat”) It’s easy to conclude that the processes
Walking into the local grocery store, the average consumer sees nothing but a
surplus of food, right there for that person to take home with ease, no harm done except
the loss of a little time. Did that consumer ever stop to think about that packet of ground
beef he or she was holding really got there? Though the idea that ran through his or her
head may be a small farm where all these cute little animals are raised and nurtured with
a perfect life, it’s an entirely different story. It’s the one that major food industries don’t
want you to hear in order to keep the unknowing consumer buying without question. Ever
since the industrial revolution, many new entrepreneurs strove to find the fastest and most
inexpensive ways to get their product made (Peta). The consumers expense was and is
still irrelevant. There have been cases upon cases suing companies for accounts of food
poisoning, poor working qualities for the staff of the companies and many more such as
fighting for pay above minimum wage. You may not know about it, but Tyson Meats, one
of the world’s top produces in meat has been sued for numerous fast food companies has
been sued for hiring of illegal immigrants and unacceptable work conditions for those
working in the factory slaughter houses. (Slaughterhouse Cases) thre was also a recent
uproar about videos claiming that groung beef in major meat production companies used
a “pink slime” to make their ground meats , which the publisher was later sued for by
Tyson Meats to prove this to be untrue(Pink Slime Lawsuit).The processes that many of
these major producing factories have often been considered inhumane, but is there really
a humane way to kill livestock? Lots of undercover research has taken place in order to
find more answers on these possible myths that most of the time have been proven to be
true.
Let’s take for example the research of federal studies performed by the National
Cancer Institute to see which major factors of the average lifestyle increase the chances
of developing cancerous diseases. The studies that were conducted included keeping
track of more than 500,000 men and women over the course of ten years and their health
records. 47,976 men and 23,276 women died over that given time, which was between
the years of 1995 and 2005 (Eating Meat Kills More People Than Previously Thought).
The group studying the massive amounts of deaths all had quite similar causes. There
were the usual things like excessive smoking and other drugs, lack of nutrition, etc.
Surprisingly the leading cause of cancer was the over-consumption of red meats which
increased chances of fatal cancers of all sorts (20% higher for women and 27% for males
on risk to cancer according to the test results). The results also showed that white meats
have the same effect to a certain extent; the percentages are just slightly lower. The study
team’s records revealed that 11% of men’s and 16% of women’s deaths could have been
prevented if it weren’t for the life threatening diets. Consequently, the U.S. government
has provided many new health plans in order to compensate for these claims in order to
get the same required nutrients that the red meats would normally supply in the average
diet. It would seem that veganism would really be the only option to be truly healthy,
which is what the National Cancer Institute was trying to promote all along, as the last
few pages were only ways to plan your own vegan diet.
With the given information, we can assume that there are many unsupervised points in
the production line that possibly caused the poisoning of this group of tested individuals
and what led some of them to their deaths. It shows yet another possible way that
consumers are never truly going to have such a thing as healthy and humane meat.
The results of just the consumption of meat may seem terrible and is a perfect reason
to why veganism is a much healthier option. There are some conflicts with the cancer
project. Other companies looked closer into the project and realized that there was a
possibility that the study may have been biased. After more research was put into the
specific topic, it was found out that the group leading the project was a vegan and
animal rights group with very close ties with like groups like PETA, which stands for
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.( Cancer Prevention and Myth: Meat
and Cancer Hypothesis - Fact & Fiction) What was also discovered was that the team
overlooked several important factors while conducting their research. For example
one of the facts that was never considered was that Harvard studies had proven with
the same set of subjects who had fatefully passed had no connection between the
death causing colon cancer and the meats that they were consuming on an almost
daily basis. There were no other scientific bodies that supported the Cancer Projects
studies due to its biased and inaccurate conclusions due to the inadequate amount of
The way that food production is carried out, especially the processes used in
producing common meats has drastically changed over the years. Machines have
revolutionized the efficiency of the process but the so called humanity that so many
activists and vegan supports ask for isn’t really a thought on the company’s mind. A lot of
people believe that just asking will change, but development is irreversible when it comes
to this topic. Many companies cannot afford such requirements even if they wanted to
due to lack of time money and space. In short, producers want the cheapest,
fastest, and easiest way to get their meat out the door and into your shopping cart. Little
attention is paid to all negative externalities and underpaid employees who disregard
weakly enforced protocols. Its arguable that there is really no such thing as humane meat,
but it really depends on the company. Is it really possible to revert to the ways of the
olden days just to keep a few activists happy? Will this destructive path lead to the point
of a world full of vegans? It is said that if all slaughterhouses had glass walls everyone
would be vegan.