We cannot start taking down animal agriculture from the farm, we have to begin where it benefits from the most, and that is school lunch programs, grazing subsidies and the United States' Department of Agriculture's nutritional guidelines.
The school programs use 60% of it's funding on FATTY meat and dairy products as opposed to 5% on fruits and vegetables. Before science discovered that fatty, subsidized foods did to children, it made sense to offer cheap food, but now there is no excuse. This leads to many unhealthy food choices in the future, as well as child obesity...
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Class Assignment: Animal Welfare Statutes (pgs 317-319)
Laws that protect animal welfare are almost non-existent on a Federal level. The most notable federal law for animal welfare is the Animal Welfare Act, which only protects animals that have direct contact with humans such as animals in circuses, zoos, and those that are owned or research or testing. Farms, pet stores and hobby breeders are not covered in the act.
The Humane Slaughter Act only protects the animal of the time of slaughter, but it isn't concerned with the treatment of the animal before its death. This act is limitedly enforced because of the over 9 billion of animals that are slaughtered annually. 95% of these slaughtered animals are chickens which are not covered by the act because they are not mammals and therefore not considered animals.
Factory farms convinced states to add common factory exceptions (CFE’s) to make legal animal abuse. This justified the way animals are treated. They are more concerned with their own benefits rather than the animal’s welfare. New Jersey public organizations, including ones for food safety and animal cruelty, challenged these CFE amendments saying they were inhumane and unreasonable; courts agreed. The New Jersey Supreme Court said that this argument wouldn’t hold up in any other states because humane treatment isn’t required.
In states that do have anti-cruelty laws, that do not contain CFEs, enforcement is rare. Local governments are the only ones who can enforce these laws, but due to limited resources and priorities of animal welfare cases, little enforcement and few prosecutions is actually done.
The Humane Slaughter Act only protects the animal of the time of slaughter, but it isn't concerned with the treatment of the animal before its death. This act is limitedly enforced because of the over 9 billion of animals that are slaughtered annually. 95% of these slaughtered animals are chickens which are not covered by the act because they are not mammals and therefore not considered animals.
Factory farms convinced states to add common factory exceptions (CFE’s) to make legal animal abuse. This justified the way animals are treated. They are more concerned with their own benefits rather than the animal’s welfare. New Jersey public organizations, including ones for food safety and animal cruelty, challenged these CFE amendments saying they were inhumane and unreasonable; courts agreed. The New Jersey Supreme Court said that this argument wouldn’t hold up in any other states because humane treatment isn’t required.
In states that do have anti-cruelty laws, that do not contain CFEs, enforcement is rare. Local governments are the only ones who can enforce these laws, but due to limited resources and priorities of animal welfare cases, little enforcement and few prosecutions is actually done.
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