photo: striatic/ BY-NC-SA

Pretty much everyone, including me, has heard before of the Humane Society, PETA, and other organizations that fight for humane treatment of animals—but until recently, I never realized the true gravity of the issue of animal cruelty. I watched a documentary called Food Inc., which, among other food and health topics, discussed the horrible treatment of the animals that we slaughter to eat. The descriptions of animal suffering and abuse disturbed and disgusted me—enough to do some more research into the topic on my own.

When you look at a cheeseburger patty, you see the singed grill lines. And you smell the onions, and the fresh peppers, and the tang of the mustard, and you taste the juices and spices. But it’s what you don’t see that should concern you more. According to the Mercy for Animals organization, the Humane Society, PETA, and the Food Inc. documentary, many of the animals that we consume suffer from diseases like cancer, tumors, and bloody open wounds, and receive no medical treatment even though workers and companies are completely aware of their injuries. Farm chickens live in sheds with levels of ammonia considered dangerous to humans. Turkeys with infected wounds are slaughtered, boiled, and packaged. They’re all killed, healthy or not—and we eat them. Each year U.S. factory farms raise and kill about 10 billion land animals. The suffering that these animals are forced through is unimaginable. They’re genetically manipulated, drugged, and raised in filthy metal cages so small that they don’t even have space to turn around, which renders their natural activities (like building nests or grazing) impossible. Bulls’ horns are ripped out of their heads, and birds’ beaks and toes are amputated, or burned off with a hot blade—without anesthesia!—so that they can’t injure themselves or one another out of their intense stress and fear. They do not see sunlight or fresh air until the day they are roughly smashed into crates like objects, shackled, and transported to a slaughterhouse. There, killing methods include shooting animals with rods through the brain, electrocution, and razors that slice their necks. However, these methods are not always effective; shooting rods and razors can easily miss, and insufficient electric currents can leave animals paralyzed—but fully capable of feeling pain—as they are hung by their ankles, skinned, boiled, hacked apart, and packaged, to make your cheeseburger patty. At slaughterhouse IBP Inc., one worker reported that the process takes about 25 minutes. Extremely limited laws regulate animal cruelty (like the law that requires only mammals to be desensitized before slaughter, leaving birds, and fish terrifyingly open to painful deaths), and even these are flouted at times. The horrors to which animals are subjected in the food industry are an appalling issue that does not receive nearly enough attention. These animals can care, feel and suffer just as much as your dog, or your cat, or even you can. Do your part to change this system. Find out more about this issue through organizations like PETA or the Humane Society, so you know what’s going into your mouth.