Billions Of Caged Animals example essay topic

The question is not can they reason, not can they speak, but can they suffer? - [quote Jeremy Bentham] It is estimated that 33 humans die each second in laboratories world wide. Shocked? Don't be, because it's not actually 33 humans that die each second, it is 33 animals; consisting of - cats, dogs, primates, rabbits, rat and mice. Between twenty and seventy million animals suffer and die in the name of research each year in the United States alone and 25 billion animals are slaughtered for meat each year worldwide. The use of animals for medical experimentation and food has been one of the most controversial issues in our world since the seventeenth century.

Well 'controversial' may not be the right word. After all the word controversial means a long argument or disagreement and lets face it there's barely a voice heard when it comes to the treatment of animals. One of the billions of caged animals used for medical experimentation. The hardest problem to understand is, who has the authority to make a choice that the human race is a greater race than that of animals?

Many people justify their dominion over animals due to the bible. The bible reads "Then God said lets us make man in our image... and let him have dominion over fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over the cattle... and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth... ". (Genesis 1: 28, Good News Bible). So many people misconstrue this statement. People believe that this statement proves their views that animals have no rights.

However God does not say they don't. The bible does not say that we have the right to work them to death, run them into the ground, brutally murder them, bash them, main them. It is just like the way parents have dominion over their children, they hold no right to use their children as tools and they have no right to abuse them. They have responsibility to care for them. The world today is becoming less aware of the pain and suffering being inflicted on animals. As a result, animals are becoming even more downtrodden in society.

Humans have, and continue to treat animals as if they are property, as if they own and therefore control their lives. The fact is that animals are no worse and no better then humans. The way humans treat animals as worthless and for use by humans is exampled no better than in the book written in the 1800's by H.G. Wells 'The Island of Dr. Moreau'. The Island of Dr. Moreau was written over a century ago. It would be assumed then that the events in this science fiction book would be completely outdated for today's reader. To some extent it is.

The science fiction thrill that would have been obtained by the people reading the book over 100 years ago has certainly disappeared. Not because it is not understandable to today's reader, merely because the fantasy glazed plot is not that hard to conceive in today's scientific era. However what is relevant for today's reader is the fiction turned fact of the animal cruelty in Dr. Moreau's laboratory. Cattle waiting to be brutally murdered for food.

Wells intended for this story to shock his readers. That he did with controversy surrounding him with the release of the book. Nevertheless for today's reader you would " ve had to been living in the dark ages for any of this to shock you. The pain and suffering of Moreau's beast people was the primary factor in the Island of Dr. Moreau. It is gruesome but that is where it ends, in the book. It is nothing compared to the pain and suffering of real animals everyday, every second all over the world - all in the name of science.

What once was intended as fiction has now become reality. A passage in 'Doctor Moreau' of him practicing his experiments on a puma reads: 'Suddenly the puma howled again, this time more painfully... I found myself that the cries were singularly irritating, and they grew in depth and intensity as the afternoon wore on... The emotional appeal of those yells grew upon me steadily, grew at last to such an exquisite expression of suffering that I couldn't stand it in that confined room no longer... It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice... It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us...

'. This passage entails the truth behind animal testing. An animal is no less sensitive to pain than man. They have similar nerves and organs of sensation; they cry and groan in cases of violent impressions upon their bodies, though because they cannot utter their complaints by speech, or human voice it is then overlooked.

We all know that animal cruelty is being dealt out on a daily basis, but it is only when we are faced with it that some people do feel compassion. The compassion however is quickly overlooked by the switch of a TV or flick of a magazine page. A review written by Brian Aldiss on 'The Island of Doctor Moreau' further verifies humans wayward thinking that animals are here purely at our disposal - 'Our powers are infinitely greater than Moreau's; the power to create new animals which will best suit human purposes is already without our grasp'. Aldiss further goes on to say that 'the memorable thing in 'Doctor Moreau' is the beast people: those lumbering, slinking, parodies of humanity. Wells makes them frightening, dark, depraved, and also pathetic. We grieve for them.

Our conscience is involved. The Hyena-Swine, the dog man, the satyr, the wolf women, stay with us'. The truth is that the only reason that these people are engraved into our conscience is because these beast people are given human characteristics. The endless number of animals that do undergo such horrific 'crimes' are not embedded in our conscience because they are not one of us. It is sad to think that humans choose to only relate and give compassion to their own species. Is animal experimentation a price too high for some to pay?

I guess the answer would depend on whether you were asking a human, a researcher, or an animal. The movie Babe is a nice movie right? Well that's if you enjoy watching an animal that is sad, confused, scared and lonely. Yes that's right the children's tale of a cute little pig that works as a sheep dog is full of pain and suffering.

Babe The movie encompasses the pure arrogance and selfishness of humans towards animals. The very start of the movie opens with the scene of babe losing it's mother. The mother is living out the dream of every pig and is taken off to be slaughtered, killed for a $8.99 per kilo bacon special at the local supermarket. The producers of this movie had the nerve to put a voice to those billions of pigs that are killed each year and make the children who watch that movie think that the pigs are happy to end up as their bacon and that they would love nothing more to walk up a ramp and be poked with a electronic rod until they walks off the edge to their death. The movie however just gets better, with babe taken to the markets to be sold for the Christmas ham. The entertainment of the movie relies heavily on the suffering of these farm animals.

Every animal at the farm is there for the farmers benefit. In one way or another they will be killed and eaten, sold to another family, or used for labour. It is absurd that this film was labelled as a happy children's film, this proves that humanity has been lost. When did the world go so wrong that it was deemed children's entertainment to see a pig mentally unfit, thinking it is a sheep dog, trying to be a sheep dog as it believes it will be eaten if it does not behave this way. Bear in mind though, the pigs whole problem boils down to it's birth, when the mother is taken away to be killed for meat. Human's think that animals are on the earth to be products for human greed and gluttony.

We cram them into boxes and cages, let them lie in their own waste, crippled, swollen, deformed; shovel them drag them, chain them like they are worthless pieces of junk with no individual value for their own lives. Humans are callous, brutal and cold-blooded towards animals. Humans have no consideration for the feelings and sufferings which we selfishly inflict on animals. When a human kills another human they are the disgrace of the country, headline news. Yet no one seems to care that everyday billions upon billions of innocent animals are being sickeningly, nauseatingly, hideously, vilely, un aesthetically murdered for meat and medical research. The awful wrongs and sufferings forced upon the innocent, faithful animal race forms the blackest chapter in the whole world's history (Edward Freeman).

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot' (Mark Twain). If this world does not change, if we continue to inflict such crimes on the innocent and not be distressed then I fear that we have lost the meaning of humanity.