Should Animals be Kept for Human Consumption?

This a paper for my animal domestication course. This paper should follow an APA format , including citations. THERE HAS TO BE 2 PEER REVIEWED SOURCES AND THEY HAVE TO BE IN (BOLD). ONE PEER REVIEWED SOURCE FOR EACH OPINION. This paper is a research about the topic listed above, Should animals be kept for human consumption?, and there has to be 2 opinions regarding each point. I HAVE A WRITTEN A PART OF THIS RESEARCH PAPER, AND I WOULD LIKE YOU TO MODIFY IT AND BUILD ON IT TO REACH THE COURSE'S 7 PAPER LIMIT RESEARCH NOT INCLUDING THE CITATION PAGE. Here is my 3 page research: To Eat or not to Eat Term Paper Should animals be kept for human consumption? 4 October 2015 INSTRUCTOR: According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the US, excluding the Virgin Islands, produced 17 million tons of meat (FAO Statistic division, 2015). This should not surprise anyone, Americans loves meat. It is embedded in American culture. Burgers, which many associate with American culture, is mainly made out of meat. We slaughter cows and chickens to extract their meat to give us those delicious burgers, but is that morally correct? Is it ethical to slaughter animals for human consumption? Do we have the right to keep and raise animals just so we could kill them later? The majority of Americans think that animals should have a fair treatment, but the topic of consuming animal’s meat is rather complicated. Many people believe that we should keep animals for our own consumption while others disagree. The center of those disagreements revolve around Animal welfare and rights and food security. Many people argue around the topics of animal welfare and animal rights, but few people understand the difference between those two topics. People often use these two terms interchangeably but they differ in their meanings. Animal welfare is described as human responsibility that encompasses all aspects of animal well-being, including proper housing, management, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling with the acceptance of human usage of animals for human needs(Animal Welfare Council , 2015). This means that it is acceptable to slaughter animals for human food consumption if the animals were in good mental health before we kill them. The majority animal welfare activists are farmers, people who raise animals for a living. They believe that since meat is a main part of our diet, it is morally correct to keep and raise animals so we can later use them for our consumption. The United States government further regulated animal welfare in the Animal Welfare Act bill that was passed in 1966. On the other hand, animal rights is the philosophical view that animals have rights similar or the same as humans. Those who hold this view believe that animals must not be used human consumption because it is ethically wrong, no matter how we treat the animals. Holders of this view follow diets that exclude animal products, such as veganism, because they believe that murder is murder, whether it’s an animal or a human. Food security describes the view that people should have the access to food at all times (FAO, 1996). Since we include meat in our diet, the meat production industry will grow and additional slaughterhouses will be built to supply the demand for more meat. With the world hunter being a global issue, many people wonder if whether we have to consume meat or seek other food sources that are viable. Some people argue against raising animals and believe that the process of keeping animals is wasteful and consume too much of our resources. They argue that it is better to plant crops for our own use instead of using these crops for animal consumption. FAO released a statistic that shows that 800 million third world country citizens could be supplied with food if we utilize the grains that originally used for animal consumption into humans consumption (FAO, 2010). Those who oppose this argument think that meat consumption is part of our species evolution. They believe that as we evolve for higher intellect, we need fuel our bodies with proteins and other vitamins that come from meat ingestion. This is made clear by the idea that human taste buds evolved to sense the taste of cooked meat (Berslin, 2013). However, others believe that keeping cattle in the US optimize our use of land. They base this thought due to the fact that the land suitable for agriculture have declined by 11% in the last 50 years (USDA, 2012). We live in a time where new ideas challenge our evolutionary stance. The idea of Animal rights is new and complicated to our ape mind. We saw that many people are pushing the idea of animal rights and focus on our consumption of meat. They believe that our consumption of meat is ethically wrong and we should turn into crops to meet our food supply. Others oppose this idea and believe that meat consumption is embedded in our genes and we should continue to consume meat. They believe that we evolved to accept meat and its taste. In my opinion, we should rely less on meat and try to increase the share of crops in our diet. I do not believe that the abolishment of meat consumption is the right idea.   References Breslin, P. (2013, May 6). An Evolutionary Perspective on Food and Human Taste. http://www(dot)sciencedirect(dot)com/science/article/pii/S0960982213004181 How Is Land in the United States Used? A Focus on Agricultural Land. (2012, March 1). Retrieved from http://www(dot)ers(dot)usda(dot)gov/amber-waves/2012-march/data-feature-how-is-land-used.aspx#.VhHUJXpVhBc United State of America food consumption. (2015). Retrieved from http://faostat3(dot)fao(dot)org/browse/area/231/E Welfare vs. Rights. (2015). Retrieved from http://animalwelfarecouncil(dot)com/welfare-vs-rights/