Cows Essays (701 words) - Meat Industry, Intensive Animal Farming

Cows Our land our bodies and our cows are all effected by the meet industry. Our land and water is getting polluted from animal waste. Our bodies are getting sick from germs in meat, and the cows are being tortured and are suffering. Waste from livestock in the United States amounts to130 times the waste produced by people. In Central California 1,600 dairies produced more waste than a city of 21 million people that's 5 tons for every person on this earth, and their is not enough surrounding land to absorb it all. Every time it rains phosphorous and nitrogen seep into our water ways causing algae and fungus to spread. One type of algae has ability to ambush its pray by stunning it with a disorienting toxin before sucking it's skin off. this one celled creature is known for killing a billion fish within North Carolina in 1995. People who came in connection with this cell often experienced memory loss and got sores on their skin. In 1982 their were 22 known species of harmful dinoflagellates in 1997 their were over 60. In the United States farm animals received 30 times the antibiotics than people did' not to treat infection but to make the animal grow faster on less feed. some physicians are finding human diseases difficult to treat each year 60'000 Americans die because their medications didn't work. Every year on average 9,000 people die from something they ate. One hamburger can contain the meat of 100 different cows from 4 different countries. One infected animal can contaminate 16 tons of beef. In 1995 the annual health care cost from meat centered diets are between 23.6 and 61.4 billion. A diet of mostly fruits, vegetables and cereals reduces 40 percent of cancers and in 1996 Americans Cancer Society released similar guidelines including recommending not to have red meat in your diet. Salmonella originated in European cows in the late 80s. From cows it spread to other livestock then to pets and wild animals and eventually to people. The one effective cure is the antibiotic fluoroquinolones but even it is loosing it's effectiveness. Soon the only way to stop the sickness will be to outlaw factory farms and the administering antibiotics to farm animals. Modern cows of today lives her whole live with a swelled and sensitive udder, it is likely never to be allowed out of her stall it is milked up to three times a day and is kept pregnant nearly all of her short life. A cows life in today milk factory is bred, fed, medicated, inseminated and manipulated for one reason maximum milk at minimum cost. Her young are usually taken from her almost immediately after birth the female calf is raised to be a dairy cow and the male calf is either immediately slaughter or it is taken to a veal factory. At the veal factory they will chain him up by his neck so he can not turn around his entire life. They feed them a special diet without iron or roughage. They inject him with antibiotics and hormones to keep him alive and to help him grow. they will keep him in darkness except for feeding time. The result is a nearly full grown animal with very tender white flesh. The good part about this is veal is still getting premium price it always did when it came from a baby calf but now their is just a lot more of it. Half of every butchered cow and one third of every butchered pig becomes a material of waste in addition 920 million animals die before reaching slaughter. With all the left over and dead animals they export lips to Mexico for taco filling and horns are made into gelatin other parts are used for drugs, aphrodisiacs and cosmetics. The rest is minced, pulverized and boiled down for more products. All this happens just so we can eat meat. If everyone had a vegetarian diet and no food was wasted, current food productions would theoretically feed 10 billion people more than the population for the year 2050. According to the Population References Bureau. Even today 840 million people are malnourished and nearly 50,000 die from starvation every day. Animal Science