The Meat Industry In In The Beast By Rolling Stone

For many people it’s not too difficult to recall when was the last time they ate a dish containing meat. According to a report at the University of Cambridge 15% of the American diet consists of meat and that percentage is only further increasing. As a result of meat becoming a staple in the modern diet, the Meat Industry has become the biggest section in agriculture and has developed new methods of producing livestock in order to feed an ever growing population. In 2012, the Meat Industry produced a record 93 billion pounds of meat. However, in recent years with sustainability becoming a priority in our daily lives, people are beginning to look for alternatives in several different aspects of their lives including their diets. ???While more …show more content…
Even though the USDA has regulations that must be met by the meat industry, for the most part these regulations are poorly enforced since the number of available inspectors is fairly small. As a result, the meat industry continues to confine animals to terrible conditions. In In the Belly of the Beast by Rolling Stone, an animal rights activists/investigator Cody Carlson compiled footage of the horrors that commonly occurred at factory farms. In one such case Carlson released footage of the treatment of cows on dairy farms which showed common practices which included “chopping off the tails of calves and the gouging of horns without anesthesia.” Although there are alternatives such as buying “humanely raised” meat to avoid the further support of animal cruelty in many cases the claim is false.????If people reduce the amount of meat they consume they can effectively boycott unethical animal treatment and maybe someday improve the living conditions for animals in the near …show more content…
However, this can be extremely dangerous for humans since antibiotics have the potential to create extremely deadly and resistant bacteria known as superbugs. In the early 1900’s it was discovered that penicillin effectively treated several kinds of infections but as soon as the drug was mass produced, in the span 20 years bacteria began to develop a resistance to penicillin (CDC). Because of results in cases like the mass production of penicillin the FDA tightened its rules creating limits in the use of antibiotics. But in the terms of agriculture, antibiotic use is still a grey area. As of now, antibiotics are used freely in factory farms in many instances where the animals are perfectly healthy to help animal growth or prevent disease. In these cases the antibiotics target treatable bacteria and can make them mutate a resistance that is then passed on to the next generation. Overtime this cycle creates stronger bacteria that require stronger antibiotics. Unfortunately the number of antibiotics that are effective are limited, and if bacteria continue to develop stronger resistance to all antibiotics the likelihood of superbugs like the black plague spreading again is very high. By mitigating the amount of meat in a diet, a person drastically reduces the risk of contracting antibiotic resistant bacteria. Granted that one person cutting